CubeSat Imaging Payload Design for Environmental Monitoring of Greenland

Abstract

Climate change affects the Earth’s ecosystem, and understanding human impact on sparsely populated polar regions is crucial, especially in glacial dynamics. Nanosatellites can play an essential role in monitoring remote regions due to their flexibility in adding remote sensors for Earth observation. However, they have hardware constraints such as physical space limitations, low power generation, and low bandwidth, as well as environmental challenges of vacuum, heat, cold and radiation. This paper details the preliminary system design of an imaging payload integrated into a nanosatellite for monitoring field study sites in Greenland. The payload is capable of supporting advanced image processing and Machine Learning (ML) applications. Key design elements, including the selection of imaging sensors, onboard processing units, and data transmission systems, which are optimized for the constraints of a nanosatellite platform, are presented. As a result, we presented a novel imaging payload system design, which shows a significant step towards leveraging space technology for environmental research.