Adapting Low-Cost Multispectral Drone Technology to CubeSats for Environmental Monitoring and Management: Harmful Algal Bloom Satellite-1 (HABSat-1)
Abstract
HABsat-1 is designed to improve our understanding of algal bloom dynamics and their causes on land by addressing several current limiting factors for this application using existing satellites. For example, there is suboptimal imager design for water, insufficient spatial resolution for precise co-registration of surface observations, and too few satellites with such capabilities to defeat cloud cover in maritime, tropical and temperate climates. We will overcome these problems by merging a new low-cost multispectral imaging technology with a low-cost CubeSat bus. CubeSats cost roughly 1/100th to 1/1000th of most current long-life imaging satellites. Such cost decreases are necessary to improve upon the temporal coverage (number of appropriate satellites) and spatial resolution of current imaging satellites, such as Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 (MERIS/OLCI). Numerous low-cost satellites Beck 2 32nd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites reduce both overall mission cost and individual launch risks associated with large production satellites, such as Landsat, while providing the temporal and spatial resolution necessary for the study of highly dynamic and spatially variable algal blooms. A team of undergraduate aerospace engineers (the UC CubeCats), computer scientists and aerospace and geographic information science faculty have been funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education and NOAA to adapt low-cost multispectral imagers designed for use on small drones to 3U CubeSats to further reduce the cost of environmental monitoring. This team will create a working on-orbit prototype for a constellation of CubeSat’s for routine drinking water monitoring known as Harmful Algal Bloom Satellite 1 (HABsat-1).
Adapting Low-Cost Multispectral Drone Technology to CubeSats for Environmental Monitoring and Management: Harmful Algal Bloom Satellite-1 (HABSat-1)
HABsat-1 is designed to improve our understanding of algal bloom dynamics and their causes on land by addressing several current limiting factors for this application using existing satellites. For example, there is suboptimal imager design for water, insufficient spatial resolution for precise co-registration of surface observations, and too few satellites with such capabilities to defeat cloud cover in maritime, tropical and temperate climates. We will overcome these problems by merging a new low-cost multispectral imaging technology with a low-cost CubeSat bus. CubeSats cost roughly 1/100th to 1/1000th of most current long-life imaging satellites. Such cost decreases are necessary to improve upon the temporal coverage (number of appropriate satellites) and spatial resolution of current imaging satellites, such as Landsat-8, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 (MERIS/OLCI). Numerous low-cost satellites Beck 2 32nd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites reduce both overall mission cost and individual launch risks associated with large production satellites, such as Landsat, while providing the temporal and spatial resolution necessary for the study of highly dynamic and spatially variable algal blooms. A team of undergraduate aerospace engineers (the UC CubeCats), computer scientists and aerospace and geographic information science faculty have been funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education and NOAA to adapt low-cost multispectral imagers designed for use on small drones to 3U CubeSats to further reduce the cost of environmental monitoring. This team will create a working on-orbit prototype for a constellation of CubeSat’s for routine drinking water monitoring known as Harmful Algal Bloom Satellite 1 (HABsat-1).
