COAST: A CubeSat for Measuring Sea Surface Salinity with Integrated Atmospheric Correction Capabilities
Abstract
We will provide new capabilities of high resolution support products of coastal and riverine environments that can be used for monitoring coastal regimes. This will address a gap in current capabilities resulting from coarse spatial and temporal resolution imagery. Expected performance improvements will be the use of high resolution CubeSats to monitor coastal and beach signatures and processes for Navy support. A CubeSat presents an interesting engineering challenge often where commonly available COTS components are either by careful integration or modification leveraged beyond their intended limit. Since primarily consumer grade sensors are used, validation of on-orbit performance beyond ground truthing corrections is extremely important. As with any remote radiometric measuring system, integral and autonomous calibration is desirable. In addition to vicarious ground based calibration, COAST will introduce a combination on-orbit optical and thermal calibration feature. In coordination with customized algorithms, this platform will provide the data required to directly quantify littoral zone surface salinity without the need for additional products. In addition to the primary mission objective of measuring sea surface salinity, some properties may serve as proxies for other phenomena; for example CDOM can be used to indicate surface current patterns and sea surface temperature exhibits a close relationship with major ocean current features thus making this a comprehensive oceanographic surface sensing instrument.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912505
Entities
People
- Glen G. Gawarkiewicz
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution