ScanEx Center initiated the new educational space project “Transparent World”. The project envisages the manufacturing and launch of the micro satellite with optical equipment into the orbit. It will be able to deliver middle resolution images (around 50 meters) to a network of ground receiving stations, deployed in the university, research and regional centers throughout the world.
The principle objective of the “Transparent World” project is to demonstrate the possibility of creating an affordable and easy-to-access source of operational space information about the natural events and processes, happening on Earth, for further use in education, science and economy.
Advantages of the “Transparent World” project:
At the first stage, a pilot lightweight nanosatellite of 12 kg is to be launched to test the technical solutions. A the second stage, a system of 5-6 nanosatellites is anticipated to be deployed, providing for the overview of the entire Earth surface during a day. Satellites are to be inserted into one orbital plane, but with different equator crossing times, allowing a ground station to receive multi-temporal images from different satellites within the entire station footprint.
An important difference of the “Transparent World” project from the other ones is a continuous Earth data transmission in the so-called direct broadcasting mode to any world ground receiving station. To date, only the American Terra and Aqua MODIS sensors’ low resolution images (250 m to 1 km) are available in direct broadcasting mode. It is the free data access philosophy of the Terra and Aqua satellites that made MODIS data so popular worldwide. According to NASA, currently over 120 world ground stations receive MODIS images, Russia included. Access to higher resolution images delivered from IRS, LANDSAT, SPOT satellites is chargeable. The 50 meter data, delivered in real-time mode from the would-be “Transparent World” nanosatellite can be in demand due to accessibility and can be acquired by the education centers at universities and high schools, as well as by the scientific, departmental and regional monitoring centers.
About “Transparent World” micro satellite
The micro satellite has been designed based on the nonpressurized platform with 3-axis attitude control system. Optical-electrical camera provides for Earth imagery with a spatial resolution of 50 m in the swath width of 400 km in four spectral channels. The selected spectral channels (green-blue, yellow-green, red and near infra-red) enable to resolve a wide range of practical and scientific tasks, such as water surface pollution definition, vegetation assessment, fire and flooding areas detection, vegetation index calculations, etc.
For the 3-axis attitude special gyro flywheels and magnetic coils have been designed, whereas star mappers and magnetometers are used as sensitive sensors.
Navigation in the outer space is supported by the onboard GPS receiver and the orbital parameters are corrected using the propulsion system with a thrust of 0.003 N. Video images from optical camera will be delivered via the transmitter at the rate of 32 Mbps, with power consumption of 40 W and the weight of 1.6 kg.
The power supply system is complete with the gallium arsenide photoconverters, lion battery and float charge and onboard potential distribution system. The peak load is over 70W at the daily average power consumption of 40W. The onboard control, commanding and telemetry system of 800 grams and 2W of consumption, including the radio-link, has been successfully tested during multiple launches and multiyear operation.
