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CANVAS [CU Boulder]
CANVAS (Climatology of Anthropogenic and Natural VLF wave Activity in Space) is a 4U-CubeSat mission will make continuous observations of very low frequency (VLF) waves in low-Earth orbit originating from lightning and ground-based transmitters.
The CANVAS instruments will observe VLF waves in the 0.3-40 kHz frequency range using a three-axis magnetic search coil, deployed on the end of a 1-meter carbon fiber boom, and two electric field dipole antennas. Together, these five wave components will be used to calculate the spectral matrix components at 1 second time resolution using real-time FFTs and spectral matrices calculated in an on-board FPGA.
It was funded in February 2019 by the National Science Foundation and was selected in 2021 by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI) to be launched as part of the ELaNa program.
| Nation: | USA |
|---|---|
| Type / Application: | Research, magnetosphere |
| Operator: | Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) |
| Contractors: | University of Colorado at Boulder |
| Equipment: | AXIS |
| Configuration: | CubeSat (4U) |
| Propulsion: | None |
| Power: | 2 deployable fixed solar arrays, batteries |
| Lifetime: | |
| Mass: | |
| Orbit: |
| Satellite | COSPAR | Date | LS | Launch Vehicle | Remarks | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CANVAS | 2026-074J | 07.04.2026 | Va SLC-8 | Minotaur-4 | with STPSat 7, Rawhide 1, 2, AggieSat 6, MISR-C 1, 2, CANVAS, ASTRA-HyRAX |
Launch Sites:
- Va = Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, USA
References:
- Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics: Atmospheric Effects of Precipitation through Energetic X-rays (CANVAS)
