A CubeSat for UV Astrophysics

The full understanding of astrophysical sources requires access to a rather wide wavelength range: every wavelength domain provides another specific piece of information that is needed to solve the puzzle. Several important wavebands, such as the UV domain, can only be covered from space because of atmospheric absorption. This requires either large, sophisticated highly sensitive and versatile observatory satellites (such as IUE, HST, …) or much cheaper and smaller nano-satellites dedicated to a specific scientific question.
In this presentation, I present the first results of a feasibility study of a 3U CubeSat for imaging photo-polarimetric observations of bright hot stars in the near-UV domain (between 2500 and 3500 Å). Owing to the absence of atmospheric perturbations, even a very small (several centimetres) aperture telescope allows to collect high-precision photometry of the brightest stars (up to V=4), with special focus on hot stars of spectral types O and B.