M-Cubed Spacecraft

M-Cubed
Satellite name M-Cubed (COVE, MCUBED, M3)
Form factor CubeSat
Units or mass 1U
Status Reentry 2024-06-30. Was semi-operational. Became conjoined with HBRE and could not receive signals, but transmitted beacon.
Launched 2011-10-28
NORAD ID 37855
Deployer P-POD (Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployer)
Launcher Delta II
Entity name University of Michigan
Institution University
Entity type Academic / Education
Country US
Launch brokerer Cal Poly
Oneliner

Demonstrate CubeSat platform and image Earth.

Description

Obtain a mid resolution image to date of Earth with at least 60% land mass and a maximum of 20% cloud coverage from a single cubesat platform. MCubed bus with the intention of making it a heritage design, thus allowing for future missions to be flown on the same bus.

Failure cause Became conjoined with HBRE and could not receive signals, but transmitted beacon.
Notes

M-Cubed became magnetically conjoined to HBRE (Explorer-1 Prime), a second CubeSat released at the same time, via strong onboard magnets used for passive attitude controlThis is the first non-destructive latching of two satellites

Sources [1]
Photo sources [1]
On the same launch

Last modified: 2024-09-29

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Created by Erik Kulu

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