Microwave Remote Sensing Based On Small Satellite

ADA LUZ CABALLERO; DENIS FERNANDO MARTÍNEZ; GUSTAVO JAVIER SANTOS; IGNACIO PINTOS PALADEA; SANTIAGO MARTÍN HENN; ARIEL SOSA VISCONTI; BLAS FERNANDO VEGA; CHRISTIAN GÓMEZ; DAVID AGUIRRE SALCEDO; EMMANUEL GÓMEZ; JUAN PABLO VARGAS

Natal

Simposio; Presentations of the United Nations/Brazil Symposium on Basic Space Technology; 2018

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Government of Brazil

The costs and execution times associated with the manufacture of a satellite in general and for Earth Observation mission in particular are typically high. Most of the assemblies and subassemblies are customized for this particular mission, using spatial qualified components radiation hard. The cost associated to design, components, tests and integration are the limiting factors that decide the feasibility of this mission. The instruments, cameras, devices, payload in general are tailored for each purpose. The cameras, radar, antennas, etc. are just for a given application. The development cost is not share to other projects. It is very usual that the total cost of an instrument is higher than the rest of the satellite added element by element. In the feasibility analysis stage, the benefit of having this mission is analyzed from the point of view of technology, science, human development, navigation, etc. related to the cost of placing this mission in orbit. If the budget is limited, it is highly convenient to direct the resources to the instruments which are the reason of satellite existence. The rest of the equipment, in general, service module computers, batteries, transmitters, receivers, GPS, etc. must use a percentage of resources as small as possible.The method proposed in this paper to reduce the overall costs and development times associated to satellite mission is the use of the CUBESAT paradigm. This consists in an intelligent use of the parts and subsystems coming from this industry, within architecture of physical redundancies that allow to assure that the mission fulfills the required life time, in general it is adopted 5 years remote sensing missions. In this paper we explain how this paradigm is applied to a small satellite of observation of the earth by means of microwaves. The instrument is a GPS reflectometer and the objective is to observe soil moisture and components that help to understand the climate and its variations.Considerations are presented related to the application of standard components with limited lifetime, and how to extend it using redundancies.