Electro-Optical Payloads and CubeSat Missions for Earth and Space Science

Abstract:

Small, low-power electro-optical scientific payloads are required if small satellites and CubeSats are to become significant enablers of new science. Although these are just one class of scientific instrumentation they have often played a key role in many scientific discoveries. The most significant advances in Earth and space science, over the next decade are most likely to derive from new observational techniques. The connection between advances in scientific understanding and technology has historically been demonstrated across many disciplines and time.

In this paper we present a review of three such sensors and the associated CubeSat missions and scientific investigation enabled. Each mission involves a relatively recently developed small electro-optical sensor which is tightly integrated with the small satellite bus in to a “Science Craft”. The first is the NSF funded OPAL mission which makes use of a high-sensitivity, hyper-spectral limb imager to observe the daytime O2 A-band (near 762nm) emission. These observations allow the temperature of the lower thermosphere to be determined and address questions on the energy budget and response of the thermosphere to geomagnetic storms. The second is the MeNISCuS mission Methane Nadir Imaging Spatial-heterodyne CubeSat Spectrometer which is a demonstration of the volume holographic grating (VHG) spatial heterodyne spectrometer developed under a NASA-sponsored STTR contract. Methane (CH4) is the second most important greenhouse gas and although burning methane produces less CO₂ than oil or coal, methane’s global warming potential is about ~30 times higher. As a result, if methane leak rates are greater than 3-5%, the warming potential will outweigh the benefit of reduced CO₂. The sources of such leaks can be discovered using missions like MeNISCuS. The third instrument and mission is SEDI a CubeSat scaled Fabry-Perot spectrometer focused on a narrow band around the OI(630) red line for observing winds in the thermosphere. These winds are also important for addressing how the earth’s thermosphere responds to energy inputs from the lower atmosphere below and the space weather inputs from above.

We present high level instrument overviews and show how these instruments and CubeSats platforms are used to enable scientific investigations.