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The ingenuity in this state is amazing!  When it comes to next-level, bleeding edge science - Louisiana has got some big brains!  The latest smarty-pants moment from the Sportsman's Paradise is coming out of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

According to Satnews.com, students at U of L were chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to be one of 9 groups to build a cubesat.  A tenth was built by NASA themselves as part of the CubeSat Launch Initiative.  Each of these tiny but powerful satellites are currently orbiting our planet (launched on January 17th) collecting and relaying critical information back to earth.

The cubesat built and fielded by the group in Lafayette is know as CAPE-3, and it carries a very special microchip designed by the students to detect radiation.  The device also contains a small geiger counter (device used to detect and measure radiation) in order to measure the experimental chip's performance.  This is not U of L's first space-rodeo either, this is their 3rd such satellite.  The acronym stands for Cajun Advanced Picosatellite Experiment.

The group has reported that all is going well, and that they have started receiving the highly anticipated data from their 4inx4inx4in cube zipping around our planet at approximately 17,000 mph.

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