The arrival of a nanosatellite — referred to as a CubeSat — on campus signals significant progress in Wichita State’s NASA project to design a solar probe to investigate neutrinos.
“This is the first major spacecraft to be at Wichita State,” said Dr. Nickolas Solomey, a professor of mathematics, statistics and physics. “That’s a great step.”
A team of researchers, led by Solomey, has worked on the development of a CubeSat, a kind of nanosatellite, since 2021. The CubeSat, built by NanoAvionics of Lithuania, will carry and test a WSU-designed prototype neutrino detector in low Earth orbit to prove the detector can operate in space and measure the rate of cosmic and gamma rays.