The Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS)

The Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) is a 6U CubeSat observatory equipped with a 9-cm telescope and a dual-band camera, currently mid-way into its development phase, and expected to be ready for insertion into low-Earth orbit in early 2024. SPARCS is specifically designed to do unprecedented long time baseline photometric monitoring of the flaring and chromospheric activity of a sample of twenty M stars simultaneously in the near-ultraviolet (NUV) and the far-ultraviolet (FUV). The SPARCS observations will considerably improve M star UV flare frequency distributions as they will enable the study of M star UV flares across a much broader range of flare energies than previous short-term observations have done. We will present the current status of the development of the mission, which is currently approaching its critical design review.

Acknowledgements: Funding for SPARCS is provided by NASA’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis (APRA) program.