Browsing by Author "Tsitas, S. R."

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    6U CubeSat design for Earth observation with 6.5m GSD, five spectral bands and 14Mbps downlink
    (Royal Aeronautical Society, 2010-11-30T00:00:00Z) Tsitas, S. R.; Kingston, Jennifer
    The design of a 6U Cube Sat including spacecraft systems and imagine payload is described for an Earth observation mission. From a Sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 600km the design enables imaging with a 6.5m GSD, an optical MTF (on axis) of >59% at half Nyquist and >35% at Nyquist, a 26km swath, 12 bit digitisation and SNR of 120-200:one in five spectral bands; blue, green, red, red edge and near infrared. Data can be downlinked at the rate of 14 Mbps to a 3.7m S band ground station. This design allows an 8kg Cube Sat to perform Earth observation missions equivalent to those of current 50-150kg microsatellites, with a corresponding reduction in cost.