CU Boulder's QB50 cubesat has taken a major step forward. On Friday, after months of building and testing, the bread-box sized satellite left campus and is headed to the Netherlands. It's going to the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics for final work before it returns to the United States for review and launch this winter.
The satellite, named 'Challenger', will study the Earth's thermosphere. It will be part of an array of cubesats being built by universities around the world that will all launch on the same rocket.