Student Cubesat To Hunt For Extrasolar Planets

Students Build Planet-hunting Miniature Satellite

“Most college finals end up in a stack on a professor’s desk. For one group of MIT students, however, their three-semester long project has a slightly different destination – outer space. The final in this case is an exoplanet-finding “CubeSat” – a small, rectangular satellite that’s about as long as a skateboard and as heavy as a bowling ball. Over the course of three semesters, MIT students have developed parts of the mission from initial concepts to functioning hardware, aiming for launch in 2012.”