The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP) project is an Earth-orbiting CubeSat mission designed to measure the linear polarization of solar flares in the hard X-ray band using a Compton scattering polarimeter. CUSP will enable the study of magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration within the Sun's flaring magnetic structures. This project is being developed within the framework of the Italian Space Agency's Alcor Program, which aims to foster new CubeSat missions. CUSP entered its Phase B in December 2024, a phase scheduled to last 12 months. This paper reports on the current status of the CUSP mission design, mission analysis, and payload scientific performance.
@article{arxiv.2508.00661,
title = {The CUbesat Solar Polarimeter (CUSP): mission overview II},
author = {Sergio Fabiani and Ettore Del Monte and Andrea Alimenti and Riccardo Campana and Mauro Centrone and Enrico Costa and Nicolas De Angelis and Giovanni De Cesare and Sergio Di Cosimo and Giuseppe Di Persio and Abhay Kumar and Alessandro Lacerenza and Pasqualino Loffredo and Giovanni Lombardi and Lorenzo Marra and Gabriele Minervini and Fabio Muleri and Paolo Romano and Alda Rubini and Emanuele Scalise and Enrico Silva and Paolo Soffitta and Davide Albanesi and Ilaria Baffo and Daniele Brienza and Valerio Campamaggiore and Giovanni Cucinella and Andrea Curatolo and Giulia de Iulis and Andrea Del Re and Vito Di Bari and Simone Di Filippo and Immacolata Donnarumma and Pierluigi Fanelli and Nicolas Gagliardi and Paolo Leonetti and Matteo Mergè and Dario Modenini and Andrea Negri and Daniele Pecorella and Massimo Perelli and Alice Ponti and Francesca Sbop and Paolo Tortora and Alessandro Turchi and Valerio Vagelli and Emanuele Zaccagnino and Alessandro Zambardi and Costantino Zazza},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.00661},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Proceeding of the conference "SPIE Optics + Photonics 2025", 3 - 7 August 2025 San Diego, California, US