CSSWE – end of mission

This is to inform you that CSSWE operating at 347.345 MHz coordinated by the IARU in 2011 and experimentally licensed through the FCC (WG2XDS) has officially ceased operations as of May 01, 2015. CSSWE was launched in September 2012 and operated successfully for over 2 years, our last contact was in January 2015 and since that time no signal from the spacecraft has been received. It is expected that the batteries are no longer operational.

More than 60 students were involved in the project and over 30 public presentations and scientific publications have been generated from this mission. In fact CSSWE data was used in a recent Nature publication by Baker et al entitled “An impenetrable barrier to ultrarelativistic electrons in the Van Allen radiation belts” (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v515/n7528/full/nature13956.html) . Additionally 3 students have completed their PhDs working on CSSWE.

Details about the mission can be found at http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/csswe/.