"Eastern European Cubesat Outperforms NASA in Measuring Brightest Cosmic Explosion"
A tiny Eastern European cubesat called GRBAlpha, built on a small budget by a team of Hungarian, Slovak, and Czech astronomers, played a key role in determining the peak intensity of the brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen, which blinded all of NASA's flagship gamma-ray missions. GRBAlpha detected over 27 gamma-ray bursts since its launch in March 2021, and its innovative detector allowed it to measure the peak brightness of the extraordinary burst that NASA's spacecraft couldn't. GRBAlpha has paved the way for a more ambitious international endeavor that plans to develop an entire constellation of gamma-ray burst detecting cubesats.