FSSCat Mission Description and First Scientific Results of the FMPL-2 Onboard 3CAT-5/A

• Published in: 2021 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium IGARSS
• Main Authors: Camps, Adriano, Muñoz-Martín, Joan Francesc, Ruíz-de-Azúa, Joan Adrià, Fernández, Lara, Perez, Adrian, Llaveria, David, Herbert, Christoph, Pablos, Miriam, Golkar, A., Gutiérrez, Antonio, Antonio, C., Bandeiras, J., Andrade, J., Cordeiro, D., Briatore, S., Garzaniti, N., Nichele, F., Mozzillo, R., Piumatti, A., Cardi, M., Esposito, M., Carnicero Domínguez, Bernardo, Pastena, Massimiliano, Filippazzo, G.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2021
• Subjects: Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/257542; https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS47720.2021.9554589

2021 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 11-16 July 2021, Brussels, Belgium FSSCat, the “Federated Satellite Systems/ 3 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 Peer reviewed