FSSCat Mission Description and First Scientific Results of the FMPL-2 Onboard 3CAT-5/A
Adriano Camps, Joan Francesc Muñoz-Martín, Joan A. Ruiz-de-Azua, Lara Fernandez, Adrián Pérez-Portero, David Llaveria, Christoph Herbert, Míriam Pablos, Alessandro Golkar, A. Gutierrrez, C. António, Jorge Bandeiras, Jorge Andrade, David Cordeiro, Simone Briatore, Nicola Garzaniti, Fabio Nichele, Raffaele Mozzillo, A. Piumatti, M. Cardi, Marco Esposito, Bernardo Carnicero Domínguez, Massimiliano Pastena, Giancarlo Filippazzo, Amanda Reagan
Abstract
FSSCat, the “Federated Satellite Systems/ <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> Cat-5” mission was the winner of the 2017 ESA S^3 (Sentinel Small Satellite) Challenge and overall winner of the Copernicus Masters competition. FSSCat consists of two 6 unit cubesats carrying on board UPC's Flexible Microwave Payload - 2 (FMPL-2), an L-band microwave radiometer and GNSS-Reflectometer implemented in a software defined radio, and Cosine's HyperScout-2 visible and near infrared + thermal infrared hyperspectral imager, enhanced with PhiSat-1, a on board Artificial intelligence experiment for cloud detection. Both spacecrafts include optical and UHF inter-satellite links technology demonstrators, provided by Golbriak Space and UPC, respectively. This paper describes the mission, and the main scientific results of the FMPL-2 obtained during the first three months of the mission, notably the sea ice concentration and thickness, and the downscaled soil moisture products over the Northern hemisphere.