TY - JOUR
T1 - FSSCat
T2 - The Federated Satellite Systems 3Cat Mission: Demonstrating the capabilities of CubeSats to monitor essential climate variables of the water cycle [Instruments and Missions]
AU - Camps, Adriano
AU - Munoz-Martin, Joan Francesc
AU - Ruiz-De-Azua, Joan Adria
AU - Fernandez, Lara
AU - Perez-Portero, Adrian
AU - Llaveria, David
AU - Herbert, Christoph
AU - Pablos, Miriam
AU - Golkar, Alessandro
AU - Gutierrez, Antonio
AU - Antonio, Carlos
AU - Bandeiras, Jorge
AU - Andrade, Jorge
AU - Cordeiro, David
AU - Briatore, Simone
AU - Garzaniti, Nicola
AU - Nichele, Fabio
AU - Mozzillo, Raffaele
AU - Piumatti, Alessio
AU - Cardi, Margherita
AU - Esposito, Marco
AU - Van Dijk, Chris
AU - Vercruyssen, Nathan
AU - Barbosa, Joao
AU - Hefele, John
AU - Koeleman, Rick
AU - Dominguez, Bernardo Carnicero
AU - Pastena, Massimiliano
AU - Filippazzo, Giancarlo
AU - Reagan, Amanda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2022/12/1
Y1 - 2022/12/1
N2 - The Federated Satellite Systems/3Cat-5 (FSSCat) mission was the winner of the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel Small Satellite (S3) Challenge and overall winner of the 2017 Copernicus Masters competition. It consisted of two six-unit CubeSats. The Earth observation payloads were 1) the Flexible Microwave Payload 2 (FMPL-2) onboard 3Cat-5/A, an L-band microwave radiometer and GNSS reflectometer (GNSS-R) implemented using a software-defined radio (SDR), and 2) the HyperScout-2 onboard 3Cat-5/B, a hyperspectral camera, with the first experiment using artificial intelligence to discard cloudy images. FSSCat was launched on 3 September 2020 and injected into a 535-km synchronous orbit. 3Cat-5/A was operated for three months until the payload was probably damaged by a solar flare and coronal mass ejection. During this time, all scientific requirements were met, including the generation of coarse-resolution and downscaled soil moisture (SM) maps, sea ice extent (SIE) maps, concentration and thickness maps, and even wind speed (WS) and sea surface salinity (SSS) maps, which were not originally foreseen. 3Cat-5/B was operated a few more months until the number of images acquired met the requirements. This article briefly describes the FSSCat mission and the FMPL-2 payload and summarizes the main scientific results.
AB - The Federated Satellite Systems/3Cat-5 (FSSCat) mission was the winner of the European Space Agency (ESA) Sentinel Small Satellite (S3) Challenge and overall winner of the 2017 Copernicus Masters competition. It consisted of two six-unit CubeSats. The Earth observation payloads were 1) the Flexible Microwave Payload 2 (FMPL-2) onboard 3Cat-5/A, an L-band microwave radiometer and GNSS reflectometer (GNSS-R) implemented using a software-defined radio (SDR), and 2) the HyperScout-2 onboard 3Cat-5/B, a hyperspectral camera, with the first experiment using artificial intelligence to discard cloudy images. FSSCat was launched on 3 September 2020 and injected into a 535-km synchronous orbit. 3Cat-5/A was operated for three months until the payload was probably damaged by a solar flare and coronal mass ejection. During this time, all scientific requirements were met, including the generation of coarse-resolution and downscaled soil moisture (SM) maps, sea ice extent (SIE) maps, concentration and thickness maps, and even wind speed (WS) and sea surface salinity (SSS) maps, which were not originally foreseen. 3Cat-5/B was operated a few more months until the number of images acquired met the requirements. This article briefly describes the FSSCat mission and the FMPL-2 payload and summarizes the main scientific results.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85144021632&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/MGRS.2022.3219778
DO - 10.1109/MGRS.2022.3219778
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85144021632
SN - 2473-2397
VL - 10
SP - 260
EP - 269
JO - IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine
JF - IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine
IS - 4
ER -