Congratulations on stumbling upon the CADENCE information page!
I would advise you to read through the project information first, but if you are here for sub-team information, check here:
CADENCE–SWANS serves as a pathfinder mission to advance spacecraft autonomy by demonstrating a single satellite’s capability to autonomously detect, characterize, and provide real-time notifications of the local space environment using low SWaP-C radiation sensors.
The Continuous Autonomous Detection Enabling Networked Collaboration Explorers of a Space Weather Anomaly Notification System is a university-led mission under the Air Force Research Lab’s (AFRL) University Nanosatellite Program (UNP).
Currently, the Bronco Space Lab is under the NS-12 cohort with CADENCE. At the time this page is being written, CADENCE has just completed the Program Management Review on August 15, 2025 in Salt Lake City, UT, just after the conclusion of the 2025 Small Satellite Conference.
The UNP program aims to teach students the full-scale design behind missions. Through different reviews, students get the chance to not only build the model for a satellite, but it also allows students to experience the systems design behind all missions. The program also offers a select few schools the opportunity to launch. Phase A lasts two years (currently we are halfway through with Phase A). Getting selected for flight transitions mission into Phase B, which could lead up to another three years of development for the mission.
The original concept for CADENCE was a wildfire detection pair of satellites, with the leading satellite running a machine learning algorithm to detect a wildfire (observing the Earth from orbit) and transmitting the detection to a trailing satellite.
Artist's Rendition of the Original CADENCE Concept
In the scope of UNP, the CADENCE-SWANS mission strives to demonstrate how a single satellite can utilize a low SWaP-C instrument to collect and process data in real time to develop a notification of the local space environment. The mission takes a significant step towards spacecraft autonomy by moving beyond simple rule-based autonomy without needing the same computational power as complete machine- learning systems. This autonomous capability is valuable for characterizing the dynamic and unpredictable nature of space weather phenomena, particularly for transient events.
The mission focuses on three key objectives: enabling spacecraft autonomy through the detection and characterization of the local space environment, providing in-situ coarse energy spectroscopy measurements of at least four energy bins, and demonstrating the feasibility of a low SWaP-C payload as a space monitoring instrument. These objectives are reflected in the mission’s Requirements Verification Matrix and serve as the basis for mission success.
The low SWaP-C instrument leverages both flight-proven RadFET sensors to track the TID and conduct coarse energy spectroscopy of the local space environment, and CMOS image sensors to track SEEs. Against a dark frame, energetic particles deposit a high charge and appear as “bright spots” when passing through the pixels of the image sensor, enabling the ability to characterize and count the number of SEEs in a given image.
By integrating flight-proven technology, CADENCE-SWANS reduces technological risk while introducing a key innovation: differential aluminum shielding with thicknesses ranging from 100 µm to 1 cm. This shielding approach filters incoming particles to enable energy spectroscopy within the 250 keV to 50 MeV range. This energy range specifically targets particle energies commonly observed in the South Atlantic Anomaly, enabling direct characterization of this well- studied radiation environment.
While the differential shielding approach builds on techniques demonstrated in constellation-scale radiation monitoring (such as Starlink), CADENCE-SWANS advances beyond data collection to autonomous onboard event characterization. The mission's autonomous capabilities are enabled through integration of the Module for Event Driven Operations on Spacecraft (Barrie, et al., n.d.), a TRL-7 modular software framework developed by Aurora Engineering. Rather than relying on pre-programmed time sequences or waiting for ground commands, MEDOS transforms raw telemetry from the CMOS image sensors and shielded RadFET arrays into physically meaningful derived parameters—such as radiation flux levels, particle energy distributions, and environmental gradients.
MEDOS uses fuzzy logic algorithms to generate confidence scores for phenomena such as SAA entry/exit, solar energetic particle events, and unexpected radiation spikes. By comparing real- time measurements against established space weather event signatures, the system enables the spacecraft to autonomously characterize potential events and generate appropriate notifications without ground-based analysis.
As of now, the satellite is planned to be a 12U (20cm x 20cm x 30cm) satellite, housing the payload, flight computer board, and power system.