Session
Year in Review Research & Academia
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract
Arcstone is a 6U CubeSat launched June 2025 to demonstrate in-space validation of an approach for measuring the lunar disk reflectance to a high degree of accuracy, which will be used to create a new lunar model for calibration of reflected solar instruments. The mission was funded via NASA's InVEST program and had design input, analysis, management and operation from NASA Langley Research Center with multiple collaborators doing additional design work, calibration, and analysis. The Arcstone instrument is a hyperspectral instrument spanning the spectral range from 350 nm to 2300 nm. Arcstone views the Moon and the Sun controlling detector saturation based on integration time. The mission seeks to provide lunar spectral reflectance measurements with a target accuracy < 0.5% (k=1), with the goal to build a highly accurate lunar calibration standard for past, current, and future Earth observing sensors. Mission enabling technologies include the use of a Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) thinned Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) sensor, a tactical cryocooler operating the detector at 140 K, along with controlling the integration time to allow the same optical path to view the Moon and Sun. This paper will present an overview of the mission status after the first year, operational insights into the hardware and software, and mission management and plans for the next few years operating on orbit.
Document Type
Event
Arcstone: Calibration of Lunar Spectral Reflectance From Space - One Year On-Orbit Performance
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Arcstone is a 6U CubeSat launched June 2025 to demonstrate in-space validation of an approach for measuring the lunar disk reflectance to a high degree of accuracy, which will be used to create a new lunar model for calibration of reflected solar instruments. The mission was funded via NASA's InVEST program and had design input, analysis, management and operation from NASA Langley Research Center with multiple collaborators doing additional design work, calibration, and analysis. The Arcstone instrument is a hyperspectral instrument spanning the spectral range from 350 nm to 2300 nm. Arcstone views the Moon and the Sun controlling detector saturation based on integration time. The mission seeks to provide lunar spectral reflectance measurements with a target accuracy < 0.5% (k=1), with the goal to build a highly accurate lunar calibration standard for past, current, and future Earth observing sensors. Mission enabling technologies include the use of a Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) thinned Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) sensor, a tactical cryocooler operating the detector at 140 K, along with controlling the integration time to allow the same optical path to view the Moon and Sun. This paper will present an overview of the mission status after the first year, operational insights into the hardware and software, and mission management and plans for the next few years operating on orbit.
