$4 million satellite the size of a CHEERIOS box is going into space to search for alien planets

This gives new meaning to the phrase, good things come in small packages.

A $4 million satellite likened to a ‘family-sized box of Cheerios’ is headed into space later this month to look at the physics of distant exoplanets known as ‘hot Jupiters,’ including the hottest planet ever found.

Known as Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE), the spacecraft is a cube satellite (CubeSat) that will conduct a seven-month long mission to look at these planets.

It is also the first CubeSat mission funded by NASA to look at exoplanets and see what this technology is capable of.

‘It’s an experiment that NASA is conducting to see how much science can be done with a small satellite,’ Colorado University Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) researcher and principal investigator Kevin France said in a release.

‘That’s exciting but also a little daunting.’

The CubeSat will head into space onboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket alongside the Landsat 9 satellite from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Lompoc, California on September 27.

According to NASA, Hot Jupiter planets are gaseous giants that orbit their stars in close proximity.  

One such example is KELT-9b, discovered in June 2017, which has a temperature of 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit and takes just a day and a half to orbit its star.

KELT-9b is named after the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) system first used to detect the planet in 2017. 

Upon its discovery, KELT-9b – roughly 670 light-years from Earth – was deemed the hottest planet ever found, smashing the record by more than 1,100°C. 

‘Because these planets are parked so close to their parent stars, they receive a tremendous amount of radiation,’ France added.

Once it’s in space, CUTE will be able to measure how fast gases are escaping from at least 10 different Hot Jupiters, including KELT-9b, thanks to its rectangular telescope design.

‘Ultimately CUTE has one major purpose, and that is to study the inflated atmospheres of these really hot, pretty gassy exoplanets,’ said Arika Egan, a graduate student at LASP who has helped to develop the mission. 

‘The inflation and escape these exoplanetary atmospheres undergo are on scales just not seen in our own solar system.’  

In addition to looking at the physics of these planets, CUTE’s findings could give new insight into other planets, including Earth and other rocky worlds, such as Mars.

‘The more places we understand atmospheric escape, the better we understand atmospheric escape as a whole,’ France said. 

‘We can then apply these findings to different types of planets.’

CubeSats have been used for a variety of missions, including looking at the sun’s activity and looking at supernova in distant galaxies.

Earlier this year, the European Space Agency said it was going to launch a CubeSat made of wood by the end of the year to see if it could withstand the conditions of space.