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Mission Overview

The FIREBIRD II mission is a continuation of the FIREBIRD mission which launched two additional 1.5U CubeSats in January 2015 (FIREBIRD 3 and FIREBIRD 4). These two CubeSats were originally the Engineering Design Unit and flight spare for the FIREBIRD mission, but have been refurbished for flight.

Launch Date: January 31st, 2015

Spacecraft Overview

The FIREBIRD II spacecraft feature two major changes from the original FIREBIRD spacecraft: 

  • The Electrical Power System was replaced with a new in-house design 
  • The FIREBIRD IMM Solar Cell Experiment (FISCE) was added.

Status

Both Flight Unit 3 (FU3) and Flight Unit 4 (FU4) were launched on January 31, 2015 with the ELaNa X (SMAP) mission. All subsystems are working well and we have recorded and downlinked hundreds of microbursts to date.

FIREBRID FU3 and FU4

FIREBIRD Flight Units 3 and 4 shown with antennas deployed.

Science Data Products

The latest science data products can be found here: solar.physics.montana.edu/FIREBIRD_II

Tracking

Additional Information

FIREBIRD 3:

FIREBIRD 4: