Earth’s lower thermosphere, spanning altitudes of roughly 90–320 km, is largely unexplored. But the QB50 project is looking to change that. Led by Belgium’s von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, the international project is launching a network of 50 small satellites. Known as CubeSats, the spacecraft are made up of only two or three 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm units. (For more on CubeSats, see Physics Today, November 2014, page 27.) Most will be equipped with identical atmospheric sensors and will collect data for months. But four have special purposes.

One of those four is QARMAN (QubeSat for Aerothermodynamic Research and Measurements on Ablation). As the CubeSats’ orbits decay and they fall back through Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will reach speeds of Mach 27 and aerodynamic heating to more than 10 000 K. QARMAN is especially designed to survive reentry and study the extreme environment....

You do not currently have access to this content.