A smaller version of an instrument now flying on NASA's Van
Allen Probes has won a coveted spot aboard an upcoming NASA-
sponsored Cubesat mission — the perfect platform for this pint-
size, solid-state telescope. Weighing just 3.3 pounds, the
Compact Relativistic Electron and Proton Telescope (CREPT) will
"augment the science of a major flagship mission" and
demonstrate the effectiveness of two new technologies that make
the instrument four times faster than its 30-pound sibling at
gathering and processing data, says CREPT Principal Investigator
Shri Kanekal at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md. The small solid-state telescope, which Kanekal and his team
are developing under NASA's Low-Cost Access to Space (LCAS)
program, will measure energetic electrons and protons in Earth's
Van Allen Belts, which are large doughnuts of radiation that
surround Earth. CREPT measurements will give scientists a better
understanding of the physics of how the radiation belts lose
electrons by a process known as