Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo

SpaceX’s next rideshare mission for small satellites, Transporter 10, is expected to take off later this week – with the launch currently scheduled for the 4^th March from the Vandenberg Space Force Base.

While the final payload manifest for the Falcon 9 rocket is still to be confirmed, there would appear to be several interesting Earth Observation (EO) missions reported to be part of the launch.

MethaneSAT

This is one of the key EO satellites on this rideshare, and it is a joint America and New Zealand mission. It will be operated by MethaneSAT LLC, which is wholly owned subsidiary of the not-for-profit American organisation, an affiliate of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), and the New Zealand Space Agency. It is expected to go into a sun-synchronous orbit at over 500 km altitude. As the name suggests, it’s aim is to measure methane pollution globally. The satellite carries a single imaging spectrometer instrument, that will measure the 1.61 – 1.68 ÎĽm wavelengths to detect methane within the short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectrum. The spatial resolution is 100 m x 400 m with a swath width of 260 km, and it can detect differences in methane levels as small as three parts per billion.

The data from the satellite is expected to be freely available to the public, and actionable emissions data should be available within three days. The team hope this can make a significant impact on methane pollution over the planet.

Other EO Satellites

In addition to MethaneSAT, some of the other EO missions expected to be on the launch, include:

• CroCube – The first Croatian satellite will have two cameras and two radio transmitters, and will photograph the Earth’s surface from an altitude of 550 km, and it is expected to pass over Croatia six times a day. It is hoped that CroCube will kickstart space sector in Croatia to create jobs and knowledge for the future.
• HAMMER – The ‘Hyperspectral AI for Marine Monitoring and Emergency Response’ (HAMMER) satellite is an In Orbit Demonstration built by Open Cosmos in conjunction with the Satellite Applications Catapult. It will carry a miniaturised EO payload, with integrated onboard capabilities to acquire, process, compress, store, and send back medium-resolution hyperspectral imagery for the Atlantic coastal and maritime areas.
• Four Ă‘uSat satellites – These are visible and infrared EO satellites with a 1m ground resolution developed and operated by the Argentinian commercial company Satellogic S.A. They join the existing Aleph-1 constellation, which is currently almost fifty satellites strong.
• Tomorrow MS1 & MS2 – The first two Cubesats in an future eighteen strong constellation carrying a Passive Microwave Sounder, which will be used to provide worldwide low latency weather data for both numerical weather prediction and long-range weather forecasts by the American operator Tomorrow.io.
• SONATE-2 – A technology demonstration Cubesat for the Bayerische Julius-Maximilians-Universität WĂĽrzburg’s SONATE (SOlutus NAno satelliTE) satellite where innovative artificial intelligence hardware, software and machine learning techniques will be verified in orbit. It also has an educational element with the DLR School Lab.
• Veery Fledgling “Ectobius” – This is the third satellite from Care Weather, and the first in their Fledging series that has the initial version of their weather sensors, which are being reported as the smallest satellite radar ever flown.
• YAM 6 – The YAM (Yet Another Mission) satellites are micro satellites owned by the American company, Loft Orbital. YAM 6 is believed to be carrying both a hyperspectral imager and a multispectral imager.

Conclusion

It is exciting to see the next generation of EO satellites being developed and put into space. It will be interesting to see the new satellites operate, and we are particularly looking forward to the datasets from MethaneSat. It will also be fascinating to see how the demonstrators perform and develop.