2018.P.1.9. Low-budget thermal earth observation for climate monitoring

Author(s)

Max von Wolff (1)
Florian Jüngermann (1)

Megina-Gymnasium Mayen, Germany

Session

P.1

Keywords

low-budget, climate, earth observation

Abstract

After the successful flight of an entirely self-developed high-altitude balloon in 2016, we now want to explore earth from an even higher altitude by developing and operating our own CubeSat in space. Even though our team just consists of eight students still enrolled at a high school in Germany, we are convinced that we can accomplish such a mission.

One of our main mission concepts is to implement a camera monitoring earth in the visible light spectrum. Besides that, another imaging module capturing light in the infrared spectrum would enable us to gather more detailed information about our earth. This information can be used to track the change in climate as well as a change in vegetation.

To overcome limitations in cost and available space, a new multiplexing technique is being evaluated which could enable the use of two imaging modules interfaced by the one and the same processing unit. As a consequence, we are able to correlate visible landmarks on earth to specific thermal distributions, as seen by the IR imaging module.

To account for the high amount of imaging data which will accumulate, we will cooperate with ham radio members and -stations from all over the world. This might also include a data transmission via light, e.g. using a laser.