Mission overview demonstrates a reactive 12U CubeSat for rapid ultraviolet observations of Type Ia supernovae, highlighting methods to constrain progenitor systems and explosion physics.
Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are a cornerstone of modern cosmology. Upcoming missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope are pushing to high redshifts to measure cosmological parameters like the dark energy equation of state. Despite the impressive success of empirically standardizing their luminosities, the explosion mechanism of SNe Ia remains hotly debated; e.g., the mass of the white dwarf (WD) when it explodes and the state of the companion star (degenerate or non-degenerate) are all currently in question. Early-time UV observations are sensitive to the outermost layers of the ejecta (and least affected by the explosion itself) and show the most diversity for SNe Ia. This makes the UV bandpass an excellent probe to solve these open questions about the nature of these cosmological distance indicators. To achieve this science, we present UVIa, a CubeSat that will be reactive and have simultaneous optical, Near-UV (NUV), and Far-UV (FUV) coverage, takes advantage of state-of-the-art UV coatings, UV-enhanced silicon detectors with whitelight rejection filter, and autonomous observing scheduling, updated regularly based on newly discovered SNe Ia from modern transient surveys.
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Hoadley et al. (2024) studied this question.
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