The Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE)The SunRISE Spacecraft

The Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) will reveal aspects of how solar energetic particles (SEPs) are accelerated at Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and how SEPs are released into interplanetary space. SunRISE is a constellation of small spacecraft operating as a radio interferometer to produce a synthetic aperture. As the first low radio frequency interferometer in space, SunRISE will provide spatially and temporally resolved observations of decametric-hectometric (DH, < 15 MHz) radio bursts that cannot be observed on Earth due to ionospheric absorption. DH radio bursts are produced by electrons energized near expanding CMEs (Type II) and released by solar flares into space (Type III). The SunRISE constellation consists of six small spacecraft provided by the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. Each SDL spacecraft carries an identical JPL payload. Each of the six identical spacecraft conform to the Planetary Systems Corp. 6U CubeSat form factor. The heritage spacecraft design is drawn from SDLs robust and modular spacecraft architecture. Subsystems for flight command and data handling, power, telecommunications, attitude determination and control, and propulsion are present to support SunRISEs unique mission requirements. The SunRISE flight software implementation utilizes Radiant, SDLs fault-tolerant core flight software. SDLs spacecraft platforms have been used for various NASA and DoD missions, such as NASAs Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) mission, which was selected as the AIAA Small Satellite Mission of the Year in 2020. The SunRISE mission began Phase B (Formulation) in 2020 June, with a planned review to assess readiness to proceed to Phase C (Development) in 2021Q3. Complementary abstracts are presented by J. Kasper, J. Lazio, A. Romero-Wolf, A. Hegedus, and J. Lux. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.