Microsats for Environmental Monitoring - and Some Current Canadian Initiatives

This paper examines the usefulness of microsats for environmental monitoring. It is based in part on a study done by Routes Incorporated for the Canadian Space Agency in 1995, plus more recent information. We define microsats and their instruments as missions whose overall payload, platform, launch, ground segment and operations costs is within a $2M to $ 10M range. The paper describes several types of environmental atmospheric and earth surface monitoring task that could be achieved with microsats, e.g. observation of atmospheric phenomena such as polar stratospheric clouds, gravity waves and ozone profiles. Compact, simple, low-cost imaging spectrographs are candidates for earth surface monitoring. Currently, the Canadian Space Agency and other agencies have funded a number of preliminary design/assessment studies that will lead toward microsat environmental missions. The paper concludes by briefly describing these projects.