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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
  • In this issue

    Features

    Within reach

    Precious cargo

    Prepaid power

    Dean’s Word

    Upfront

    • Fabricating the ApoCALypse
    • Decisions, decisions
    • Rerouting behavior
    • Olympic-caliber engineer
    • A new loo
    • Q+A on revolutionizing online education
    • Comments

    Breakthroughs

    • Electricity goes viral
    • Mistaken identity
    • Switched
    • Charged up
    • Image makers
    • Piggyback ride

    Alumni notes

    • Maker’s ed.
    • Picture-perfect translation
    • Building green motorcycles
    • Farewell

    Download this issue

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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.

Topics: Aerospace, Mechanical engineering, Students
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