QUESTION 6 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROJECT

0139-EX-CN-2018 Text Documents

Arizona State University

2018-02-12ELS_204679

               Phoenix - A Study of Heat Islands Through Infrared Remote Sensing


Project Overview
Phoenix ​is a 3U CubeSat developed by Arizona State University which will measure the effects of Urban
Heat Islands in selected US cities through infrared remote sensing. Images will be taken from a Low
Earth Orbit of 400 km and a 51.6° inclination of US cities. Phoenix will launch on November 8, 2018
with the ELaNa-21 program on a Cygnus ISS resupply mission. The satellite will deploy from the ISS and
remain in orbit for two years before reentering the atmosphere. Phoenix is supported through a
cooperative agreement under the NASA USIP Program, and the satellite is owned and will be operated by
a student team at Arizona State University.

Communications
Satellite communications will be performed through UHF amateur frequencies (435-438 MHz) and
S-Band amateur frequencies (2.4-2.45 GHz). The UHF band will be used for regularly transmitting
satellite health data (power consumption, satellite location, and hardware performance) as well as
receiving all operation schedules for the satellite which will be uplinked from the ground station. S-Band
transmission will be used for downlinking all captured images. Communications will be handled over
CCSDS CFDP protocols for both UHF and S-Band frequencies. The IARU has suggested the following
frequencies for both bands:

    ●   UHF: ​437.35 MHz (ITU Emission: 20K0F1D)
    ●   S-Band:​ 2402.5 MHz (ITU Emission: 1M35G1DDN)

Ciphers & Control
Once the mission success criteria has been met, limited information on the spacecraft command system
will be released. The amateur community will receive access to a “Housekeeping” parser to allow them to
listen to general satellite telemetry so that Phoenix may remain a resource to others in the future. Once
minimal mission success criteria have been met, amateurs will also be allowed to downlink images from
the satellite to encourage participation in the mission. However, all command codes for spacecraft attitude
control, tracking, image capture, and other mission critical operations will require a rotating one-time use
cipher key using a simple substitution scheme to maintain operation integrity. The cipher system will be
stored in a private GitHub repository. Access to the repository is controlled by the project’s faculty
mentor and it will be protected with gpg public/private key pairs. The cipher is the only encryption
method on the Satellite.

Ground Station
The ground station located at Arizona State University will be used for all communication with the
satellite. All mission operations will be performed in the ASU mission operations center. Embry Riddle
will be used as a backup ground station for communication over UHF frequencies in the event the ASU
ground station is under maintenance. There is no backup ground station for S-Band downlinks.



Document Created: 2019-04-26 18:45:28
Document Modified: 2019-04-26 18:45:28

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