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Home > News > Piggyback ride

Piggyback ride

Berkeley Engineer Fall 2012
November 1, 2012
This article appeared in Berkeley Engineer magazine, Fall 2012
Jerry Kim with CINEMA nanosatellite

Jerry Kim (B.S.’11 ME) holds the CINEMA nanosatellite. (Photo by Robert Sanders/UC Berkeley)

What is the size of a shoebox, weighs eight pounds and flies? That would be CINEMA (CubeSat for Ions, Neutrals, Electrons and MAgnetic fields), one of 11 miniaturized satellites that was launched with an Atlas V rocket into Earth’s orbit this past September. Built in three years by an international team of 45 students—including 25 from Berkeley’s engineering and physics programs—CINEMA is a relatively inexpensive nanosatellite made to piggyback aboard other NASA missions. CINEMA was constructed from a group of three modular CubeSats, each measuring a standard 10x10x10 centimeters and weighing just over one kilogram. Designed to spend a year in orbit, CINEMA will gather images of the ring current, an electrical current that encircles the Earth and is responsible for geomagnetic storms.

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