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CubeRRT (CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology)

Last updated:Apr 20, 2018

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Overview

Mission typeEO
AgencyNASA
Mission statusMission complete
Launch date21 May 2018
End of life date21 May 2023
Measurement domainAtmosphere
CEOS EO HandbookSee CubeRRT (CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology) summary

CubeRRT (CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology) Validation Mission

Spacecraft    Launch    Mission Status    Sensor Complement    References

A NASA team at GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) in Greenbelt, Maryland, is collaborating with OSU (Ohio State University) and NASA/JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena, California, to build and launch a new CubeSat mission that will test next-generation techniques for detecting and discarding RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). Funded by NASA's InVEST (In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies) program, the CubeRRT project specifically will evaluate a specialized digital-based spectrometer equipped with sophisticated algorithms that can detect and mitigate the radio interference that spills over and ends up as noise in scientific data. 1)

Goddard is charged with developing the instrument’s front-end microwave electronics and overseeing the instrument’s integration onto the spacecraft. JPL, meanwhile, is building the instrument’s backend digital electronics. The Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore is handling ground-system design and operations, while Ohio State’s Joel Johnson is leading this effort. In addition, Ohio State is implementing the dual-helical antenna and procuring the spacecraft bus from the Boulder, Colorado-based BCT (Blue Canyon Technologies). 2) 3)

RFI is a real problem for Earth science observations. To that end Blue Canyon Technologies will build the CubeRRT for Ohio State University to provide more accurate measurements and radiometers. The goal is to identify and mitigate RFI for spaceborne microwave radiometers. As spectrum usage has increased by the communications industry, RFI has become a problem for science missions. CubeRRT will build on the success of RFI mitigation techniques developed for NASA’s SMAP (Soil Moisture Active/Passive) mission, but at higher frequencies, 6 - 40 GHz, instead of SMAP’s 1.4 GHz. Mitigation at these higher frequencies enables scientists to continue using radiometry for high quality Earth science measurements. 4) 5)

Background: The cacophony of signals constantly at play on Earth - from radio traffic to cell phones and other communications systems – ultimately creates the white noise of human technology in action. In space, however, this cacophony is increasingly interfering with important scientific endeavours. Joel Johnson, Chair and Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at OSU, is now leading a NASA program to help navigate the noise. Since 2001, his team at OSU has focused on detecting and discarding man-made RFI from the Earth’s naturally fluctuating microwave signals. The technology is imperative for future satellite missions using microwave radiometry to observe Earth's properties. 6)

Johnson's team contributed similar technologies for NASA’s SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellite, which launched in January 2015. SMAP is now helping scientists create the most detailed global maps of soil moisture to date, improving understanding of Earth’s water and carbon cycles, as well as the ability to manage water resources.

RFI subsystems for higher frequency microwave radiometry over the range 6-40 GHz, however, require a larger bandwidth, so that the capabilities of RFI mitigation backends in terms of bandwidth and processing power must also increase. To date, no such wideband subsystem has been demonstrated in space for radiometers operating above 1413 MHz.

The enabling technology is a digital FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)-based spectrometer with a bandwidth of 1 GHz or more and capable of implementing advanced RFI mitigation algorithms such as the Kurtosis and cross-frequency methods. This technology has a strong ESTO heritage, with the algorithms developed and demonstrated via the IIP (Instrument Incubator Program) and wideband backends developed under other ESTO support. The digital backend is currently at TRL 5, having been successfully tested in an RFI environment, and can be ported easily to a flight-ready firmware. Though the technology can be demonstrated for any frequency band from 1 to 40GHz, the CubeRRT project will integrate the backend with a wideband radiometer operating over a 1 GHz bandwidth tunable from 6-40 GHz to demonstrate RFI detection and mitigation in important microwave radiometry bands. Along with a wideband dual-helical antenna, the payload will be integrated with a 6U CubeSat to demonstrate operation of the backend at TRL 7. The payload is expected to operate at a minimum duty-cycle of 25% to be compatible with spacecraft power capacity. Although the spatial resolution to be achieved will be coarse (due to the limited antenna size possible), the goal of demonstrating observation, detection, and mitigation of RFI is achievable in this configuration.

Figure 1 illustrates the 6-40 GHz portion of the spectrum, along with the frequency ranges used in several past radiometer missions; the sensitivity to environmental effects in each of these frequencies is also shown in the lower curves. Passive microwave observations are allocated primary-use only in a small number of bands (those shown as green vertical bars), with shared-use in those marked in yellow. Due to the high sensitivity of radiometer measurements, shared allocations. offer little protection from RFI corruption, as amply demonstrated in numerous past missions. As active sources expand over larger areas and occupy additional spectrum, it will be increasingly difficult to perform radiometry without an RFI mitigation capability. Co-existence in some cases may be possible provided that a subsystem for mitigating RFI is included in future systems (Ref. 5).

Figure 1: Frequency ranges allocated for microwave radiometer observations (green=primary, yellow=shared) in the 6-40 GHz range. Spectral ranges used by several past missions also indicated, as well as curves of sensitivity to environmental parameters vs. frequency (CubeRRT collaboration)
Figure 1: Frequency ranges allocated for microwave radiometer observations (green=primary, yellow=shared) in the 6-40 GHz range. Spectral ranges used by several past missions also indicated, as well as curves of sensitivity to environmental parameters vs. frequency (CubeRRT collaboration)

Objectives of the CubeRRT mission

• Demonstrate wideband RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) mitigating backend technology for future spaceborne microwave radiometers operating 6 to 40 GHz

• Crucial to maintain US national capability for spaceborne radiometry and associated science goals

• Demonstrate successful real-time on-board RFI detection and mitigation in 1 GHz instantaneous bandwidth

• Demonstrate reliable CubeSat mission operations, include tuning to EESS (Earth Exploration Satellite Service) allocated bands in the 6-40 GHz region.

Approach

• Build upon heritage of airborne and spaceborne (SMAP) digital backends for RFI mitigation in microwave radiometry

• Apply existing RFI mitigation strategies onboard spacecraft; downlink additional RFI data for assessment of onboard algorithm performance

• Integrate radiometer front end, digital backend, and wideband antenna systems into 6U CubeSat

• NASA CSLI (CubeSat Launch Initiative) launch from the ISS into 400 km orbit; ~ 120-300 km Earth footprint for RFI mitigation validation

• Operate for one year at 25% duty cycle to acquire adequate RFI data.

Parameter

SMAP

Future

Bandwidth

20 MHz

100's of MHz in each channel

RFI processing on ground ?

Yes (limited downlink volume)

Not possible (downlink volume too high)

RFI processing on-board spacecraft ?

No: not necessary

Yes: only way to address RFI challenge for future systems

Table 1: Challenges in current and future missions



 

Spacecraft

CubeRRT is a 6U CubeSat of size 20 cm x 30 cm x 10 cm to be built by BCT (Blue Canyon Technologies) of Boulder, CO for OSU. BCT will integrate the CubeRRT payloads with the 6U spacecraft bus and perform environmental testing of the complete spacecraft. The spacecraft will be operated from BCT’s Mission Operations Center located in Boulder, Colorado. BCT’s 6U spacecraft is a high-performance CubeSat that includes an ultra-precise attitude control system that allows for accurate knowledge and fine-pointing of the satellite payload (Ref. 4).

 

Microwave frequency

6 - 40 GHz tunable, 1 GHz instantaneous,
Operations emphasize nine bands commonly used for microwave radiometry

Polarization

Single polarization (left hand circular)

Observation angle
Orbit (ISS launch)

0º Earth incidence angle
400 km altitude, inclination of 51.6º

Spatial resolution

120 km (40 GHz) to 300 km (6 GHz)

Integration time

100 ms

Antenna gain / Beamwidth

15 dBi/40º (6 GHz), 23 dBi/16º (40 GHz)

Interference mitigation

On-board Nyquist sampling of 1 GHz spectrum
On-board real-time kurtosis, pulse, and cross-frequency detection

Calibration (internal)

Reference load and noise diode sources

Calibration (external)

Cols sky and Ocean measurements

Noise equivalent dT

0.8 K in 100 ms (each of 128 channels) in 1 GHz

Average payload data rate

9.375 knit/s (including 25% duty cycle), ~102 MB/day, ~ 37 GB over 1 year mission life

Downlink

135 MB per daily ground contact (6 minute contact with 3 Mbit/s UHF Cadet radio), 32% margin over payload data

Table 2: Summary of CubeRRT properties
Figure 2: Illustration of CubeRRT on-orbit configation (image credit: CubeRRT Team)
Figure 2: Illustration of CubeRRT on-orbit configation (image credit: CubeRRT Team)

CubeRRT is expected to operate with a duty-cycle of 30%. CubeRRT will mostly be operational over landmasses where the occurrence of RFI is expected to be significantly higher. CubeRRT is designed for 12 months of commissioning and operations. Once the CubeRRT mission has met all of its validation goals, the proven technology can be included in NASA’s future radiometry missions to ensure they can continue to collect high-quality Earth-observing data – data that will help researchers answer scientific questions about our planet and better understand our home.

Figure 3: Artist's view of the deployed CubeRRT satellite (image credit BCT)
Figure 3: Artist's view of the deployed CubeRRT satellite (image credit BCT)
Figure 4: The CubeRRT satellite and Blue Canyon Technologies team members with Principal Investigator Joel Johnson (far left) of The Ohio State University (image credit: Blue Canyon Technologies) 7)
Figure 4: The CubeRRT satellite and Blue Canyon Technologies team members with Principal Investigator Joel Johnson (far left) of The Ohio State University (image credit: Blue Canyon Technologies) 7)


Launch

The CubeRRT satellite was launched on 21 May 2018 (08:44 UTC) on the Cygnus CRS-9 flight of Orbital ATK (OA-9E), ELaNa-23 flight of NASA to the ISS. The launch vehicle was Antares 230 and the launch site was MARS (Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport) LP-0A, Wallops Island, VA, USA. 8)

Orbit: Near-circular orbit, altitude of ~400 km, inclination = 51.6º.

The ELaNa 23 (Education Launch of Nanosatellites 23) initiative payloads of NASA on OA-9 are: 9)

• HaloSat (Soft X-ray Surveyor), a 6U CubeSat of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.

• TEMPEST-D1 (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Technology - Demonstration 1) , a 6U CubeSat of CSU (Colorado State University), Fort Collins, CO.

• EQUISat, a 1U CubeSat of Brown University, Providence, R.I.

• MemSat, a 1U CubeSat of Rowan University, Glassboro, N.J.

• CaNOP (Canopy Near-IR Observing Project), a 3U CubeSat of Carthage College, Kenosha, WIS, USA.

• RadSat, (Radiation-tolerant SmallSat Computer System), a 3U CubeSat of MSU (Montana State University), Bozeman, Montana.

• RaInCube (Radar In a CubeSat), a 6U CubeSat of NASA/JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Pasadena, CA.

• SORTIE (Scintillation Observations and Response of the Ionosphere to Electrodynamics), a 6U CubeSat of ASTRA (Atmospheric & Space Technology Research Associates), Boulder, CO.

• CubeRTT (CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology) Validation Mission , a 6U CubeSat of OSU (Ohio State University), Columbus, Ohio.

• AeroCube-12A and -12B, a pair of 3U CubeSats of the Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo , CA, to demonstrate a the technological capability of new star-tracker imaging, a variety of nanotechnology payloads, advanced solar cells, and an electric propulsion system on on one of the two satellites (AC12-B).

• EnduroSat One, a 1U CubeSat of Bulgaria, developed by Space Challenges program and EnduroSat collaborating with the Bulgarian Federation of Radio Amateurs (BFRA) for the first Bulgarian Amateur Radio CubeSat mission.

• Lemur-2, four 3U CubeSats (4.6 kg each) of Spire Global Inc., San Francisco,CA.



 

Mission Status

• November 30, 2020: For the past two and a half years, The Ohio State University’s first satellite, CubeRRT, has orbited our sphere thousands of time, while transmitting back vital data for Earth climate scientists. 10)

- On Nov. 26, CubeRRT officially became the first of NASA’s group of shoebox-sized, constellation satellites launched in May 2018 to reenter Earth’s atmosphere.

- As Joel Johnson explains, an Ohio State professor of electrical and computer engineering, Sustainability Institute affiliated faculty member and principal investigator on the mission, reentry means the CubeRRT spacecraft disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere, officially ending operations.

- While the mission is over, the impact CubeRRT had on Earth science continues.

- CubeRRT was launched on May 21, 2018 to the International Space Station, and then deployed into orbit from there on July 13.

- Johnson said that by October of 2018, CubeRRT had accomplished its mission goals of demonstrating real-time filtering of radio frequency interference aboard the satellite.

- The measurements since that time have continued to demonstrate the success of the mission’s approach, he said, increasing confidence in on-board RFI filtering technologies.

- CubeRRT was designed to solve a major problem for Earth-observing microwave radiometers by reducing the impact of man-made radio transmissions on measurements of Earth’s properties.

- Johnson said the Earth naturally emits microwave radiation, which scientists study with sensors called microwave radiometers. The data from these sensors helps determine important environmental information like soil moisture, sea temperature, sea ice coverage, weather, and much more.

- However, humans make a lot of noise. As the need for wireless services worldwide continues to increase, he said, the growth of manmade radio transmissions is making it increasingly difficult for scientists to detect Earth’s natural microwave radiation. The unwanted man-made signals are called RFI (Radio Frequency Interference).

- Throughout its mission, CubeRRT demonstrated a new capability of onboard RFI removal crucial for future Earth-observing microwave radiometers.

- Ohio State’s ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL) led the CubeRRT project in collaboration with team members from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT). Ohio State ECE Research Associate Professor, Chi-Chih Chen, developed an innovative antenna design for the radiometer to allow for the satellite to perform the necessary measurements.

- Ohio State ECE Research Scientist and Sustainability Institute affiliated faculty member Chris Ball said CubeRRT was originally expected to remain operable for approximately one year.

- “The continued operation of CubeRRT for more than two years exceeded expectations and allowed for an extended period of data collection,” Ball said. “Because CubeRRT has no propulsion system, its altitude continuously decreased.”

- He said the satellite was originally orbiting at approximately 250 miles above Earth (~400 km).

- According to CubeRRT operations engineer Doug Laczkowski of BCT, CubeRRT’s orbit altitude began decreasing rapidly in November.

- In total, he said, the CubeRRT satellite made 13,450 trips around the Earth before re-entry.

- To highlight Ohio State’s first satellite launch, team members spoke about the mission on NASA videos, as well as at student and public outreach events. Land Grant Brewery of Columbus also released a CubeRRT-themed “extra pale ale” beer in celebration of the Ohio State achievement.

- Johnson said the results of the CubeRRT mission continue to impact the design of future microwave radiometer systems for Earth observations, as indicated by the multiple presentations at the recent Microwave Radiometry 2020 conference focused on including real-time on-board interference suppressing subsystems.

• April 8, 2020: The CubeSat radiometer radio frequency interference technology validation mission (CubeRRT) was developed to demonstrate real-time onboard detection and filtering of radio frequency interference (RFI) for wide bandwidth microwave radiometers. CubeRRT's key technology is its radiometer digital backend (RDB) that is capable of measuring an instantaneous bandwidth of 1 GHz and of filtering the input signal into an estimated total power with and without RFI contributions. CubeRRT's onboard RFI processing capability dramatically reduces the volume of data that must be downlinked to the ground and eliminates the need for ground-based RFI processing. RFI detection is performed by resolving the input bandwidth into 128 frequency subchannels, with the kurtosis of each subchannel and the variations in power across frequency used to detect nonthermal contributions. 11)

- RFI filtering is performed by removing corrupted frequency subchannels prior to the computation of the total channel power. The 1 GHz bandwidth input signals processed by the RDB are obtained from the payload's antenna (ANT) and radiometer front end (RFE) subsystems that are capable of tuning across RF center frequencies from 6 to 40 GHz. The CubeRRT payload was installed into a 6U spacecraft bus provided by Blue Canyon Technologies that provides spacecraft power, communications, data management, and navigation functions.

1) Operational status of the CubeRRT mission in January 2019. 12)

• Completed 100 hours of RDB (Radiometer Digital Back-end)-only operations

- Demonstrated robust operation of the RDB processor over extended period

- No adverse radiation effects (latch-up, reset)

- Power consumption nominal

- Thermal effects as modeled pre-launch

• Continuing RFE (Radiometer Front-End) recovery effort

• Prepared for full mission operations upon successful RFE recovery.

2) On-Orbit Issues

• RFE anomaly

- Payload radiometer experienced anomalous shut down during a 10-minute collect on 8 September 2018.

- Subsequent telemetry data indicated loss of +7.5 V DC power to RFE (Radiometer Front-End)

- Recovery efforts continuing

• Loss of radio contact

- CubeRRT lost contact with WFF ground station on 29 October 2018

- Contact restored on 12 December 2018

- Root cause –flight software error caused continual resets, loss of attitude control

- Bus reset from radiation event triggered reboot on uncorrupted redundant image

- FSW (Flight Software) bug fixed and operations resumed.

3) Conclusions and Next Steps

• CubeRRT mission seeks to validate RFI detection and mitigation technologies for future Earth observing microwave radiometers operating 6-40 GHz

• Satellite has been successfully designed, assembled, tested, launched, deployed, and commissioned

• Orbital operations are ongoing (~1 year)

• Data products will be publicly available through OSU. https://u.osu.edu/cuberrt/data-products/

Figure 5: First light on 5 September 2018. On-board filtering requires 99% less data to be downlinked (image credit: OSU)
Figure 5: First light on 5 September 2018. On-board filtering requires 99% less data to be downlinked (image credit: OSU)

• October 2, 2018: The debut data from The Ohio State University’s first satellite transmitted back from orbit, and the results look promising for future scientists studying the Earth. 13)

- “The data we received on Sept. 5 confirmed successful real-time on-board removal of RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) from CubeRRT’s measurements,” Johnson said. “This was the primary goal of the mission, so it was a great feeling to know we had reached this important milestone and that our little satellite was making big accomplishments up in space.”

- From July through early September, tests and checkout of the CubeRRT spacecraft communications, power and other subsystems were performed before turning on the RFI processor in September. The first light dataset was acquired over the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 5 during a 10-minute period of measurements.

- In terms of those measurements, the team explained how CubeRRT observes a 1 GHz wide portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, tuned over 10 different bands commonly used for Earth observing microwave radiometers. The total noise power in the 1 GHz bandwidth varied with time as differing portions of the ocean were observed. Because the observations also included a low level of RFI, the original data without RFI correction had a power level higher than the true Earth emitted power. CubeRRT’s RFI processor produced the corrected noise temperature on board the spacecraft that eliminated RFI contributions. Validation of CubeRRT’s processing was also performed on the ground, and a high level of agreement validated the on board processing.

- Christopher Ball, a research scientist at Ohio State’s ElectroScience Lab, said by performing RFI correction onboard the spacecraft, CubeRRT eliminates the requirement to downlink additional data to the ground to perform RFI processing. This was the technological barrier the team hoped the new advancements could solve, and they were correct.

- According to the results, he said, the reduction in data volume is greater than a factor of 100 times, which makes the incorporation of crucial RFI processing feasible for future Earth observing radiometers.

- “We’re now continuing to operate CubeRRT’s RFI processor over longer time periods to demonstrate long-term operations,” Johnson said. “The team is very excited to see what comes next for CubeRRT and to transition this new technology into future Earth observing satellites.”

• July 13, 2018: NanoRacks successfully completed the 14th CubeSat Deployment mission from the Company’s commercially developed platform on the International Space Station. Having released nine CubeSats into low-Earth orbit, this mission marks NanoRacks’ 185th CubeSat released from the Space Station, and 217th small satellite deployed by NanoRacks overall. 14)

- The CubeSats deployed were launched to the Space Station on the ninth contracted resupply mission for Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems) from Wallops Island, Virginia in May 2018.

- NanoRacks offered an affordable launch opportunity, payload manifesting, full safety reviews with NASA, and managed on-orbit operations in order to provide an end-to-end solution that met all customer needs.

- The satellites deployed were: CubeRRT, EQUiSat, HaloSat, MemSat, RadSat-g, RainCube, TEMPEST-D, EnduroSat One, Radix (the last two entries are commercial CubeSats).

- The CubeSats mounted externally to the Cygnus spacecraft from the May 2018 launch are scheduled to be deployed on Sunday, July 15th, pending nominal operations.



 

Sensor Complement

The CubeRRT payload has three critical pieces of technology: a wideband antenna unit, a radiometer front-end (RFE) unit, and a radiometer digital back-end (RDB) that performs the on-board detection and filtering of RFI. The main objective of the CubeRRT mission is to demonstrate the RFI mitigation technology on a flight-ready hardware in space, increasing the technology readiness level (TRL) from 6 to 7. CubeRRT is designed to make wideband measurements over the whole 6 to 40 GHz range, but the prime mission objective is to demonstrate RFI mitigation over ten “golden” frequency bands that are allocated to Earth observation bands. The Ohio State University leads the CubeRRT mission. The algorithm validating back end technology is built at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and the radiometer front end is built at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. 15)

Antenna unit

The dual-element antenna system is composed of a conical antenna (three circularly polarized tapered helical antennas, 6-40 GHz). The antennas are being designed, developed and tested at The Ohio State University. The series of antenna are necessary to provide sufficient gain over a wide range of frequencies from 6 to 40 GHz. The current design provides a gain of 12 dBi at 6 GHz and 21 dBi at 40 GHz.

RFE (Radiometer Front-End)

The CubeRRT RFE is designed to sweep from 6 to 40 GHz with a 1 GHz bandwidth being injected into the RDB. The radiometer is a single tunable superheterodyne receiver. At the front-end of the radiometer the RFE has a four-position switch to choose between the three helical antennas as well as a reference load for calibration. The RFE contains front-end wideband coaxial low noise amplifiers for pre-amplification. The RFE also contains a coupled wideband noise-source to for full internal calibration of the radiometer. The RFE achieves frequency tuning via a phased-locked oscillator (PLO) and sub-harmonic image rejection (IR) mixer. The design allows flexibility between choosing upper and lower side-bands to completely cover the 6 to 40 GHz regime. The architecture sacrificed radiometer performance to meet within the size, mass and power requirements of the 6U system.

RDB (Radiometer Digital Backend)

The RDB of NASA is designed to digitize a 1 GHz bandwidth signal and perform advanced digital signal processing algorithms on an on-board FPGA for RFI mitigation. The RDB ADC is capable of ingesting the IF signal produced by the RFE from 1-2 GHz aliased region. The FPGA proceeds to produce a 128 frequency spectra of the incoming signal using a front-end polyphase filter-bank. The output of the 128 channel spectra then undergoes gain adjustment to account for the non-uniform pass-band shape of the RFE signal. The higher order statistical moments of the data per channel are calculated (2nd and 4th moment) as a pre-cursor to RFI detection and mitigation. The second moment is uncalibrated power of the signal. The first RFI detection algorithm applied is a simple threshold detection algorithm across the spectra to detect frequency outliers. The second RFI detection algorithm is more advanced and uses the fourth and second moments to calculate kurtosis of the signal as a test of normality. Any signal that deviates from normality is flagged as being corrupted by RFI. The flags of the two algorithms are combined and the power in each frequency bin is summed to produce mitigated and unmitigated accumulated power. CubeRRT will downlink all 128 channels to verify performance of mitigated and unmitigated uncalibrated power outputs. Most of the thresholds, coefficients, gain-adjustment values within the RDB are updatable from the user perspective. Figure 6 shows the RFE and RDB subsystems mounted to a baseplate for integrated payload testing.

Figure 6: CubeRRT RFE and RDB subsystems, integrated for payload testing (image credit: CubeRRT Team)
Figure 6: CubeRRT RFE and RDB subsystems, integrated for payload testing (image credit: CubeRRT Team)

CubeRRT observes Earth emissions at 0 degrees Earth incidence angle (to improve spatial resolution) in a single circular polarization and at 100 ms reporting interval. Although CubeRRT was designed to output both the “original” and “clean” uncalibrated total powers corresponding to 100 ms integration over the full 1 GHz bandwidth, CubeRRT is also capable of reporting measured powers and the associated kurtosis values in 128 frequency channels within the 1 GHz bandwidth. This finer resolution “spectrum” data allows the performance of the onboard processor to be validated in ground processing, thereby providing a complete assessment of onboard performance as a function of RFI source type, frequency content, and power levels.

Table 3: Summary of CubeRRT design goals
Table 3: Summary of CubeRRT design goals

 

Concept of CubeRRT operations

NanoRacks CubeSats are delivered to the International Space Station (ISS) already integrated within a NRCSD (NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer) or NanoRacks DoubleWide Deployer (NRDD). A crew member transfers each NRCSD/NRDD from the launch vehicle to the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). Visual inspection for damage to each NRCSD is performed. When CubeSat deployment operations begin, the NRCSD/NRDDs are unpacked, mounted on the JAXA Multi-Purpose Experiment Platform (MPEP) and placed on the JEM airlock slide table for transfer outside the ISS. A crew member operates the JEM Remote Manipulating System (JRMS) – to grapple and position for deployment. CubeSats are deployed when JAXA ground controllers command a specific NRCSD. 16)

CubeRRT operations are commanded based on a scheduler simulation tool developed by OSU (Ohio State University). This tool may be used to develop algorithms for power cycling and frequency tuning, which propagates over the orbital lifetime to predict and optimize CubeRRT measurement results. The scheduler provides information such as the duration until mission-level requirements are fulfilled, radiometry coverage maps, long-term battery depth-of-discharge (DOD), and payload data. In addition, the scheduler may be used to automate the process of generating payload command sequences uplinked regularly to the spacecraft during operations.

CubeRRT’s mission goals of evaluating on-board detection and filtering of RFI, coupled with the limited solar cell and battery capacity of a 6U CubeSat, bring about unique challenges for payload operations. These challenges primarily reside with regard to scheduling the power cycling and frequency tuning of the payload. In contrast to other radiometer missions, which typically aim to gather brightness temperature information of the entire Earth’s surface, CubeRRT’s power budget allows operation only at a duty cycle of approximately 30%. The system prioritizes operation of the payload at locations of known RFI sources and over landmasses where RFI is more likely to occur. 17)

To properly model CubeRRT operations, the scheduler simulates the power system, telemetry buffers, RFI coordinates, and orbital propagation models. The power system state is modelled with knowledge of the available energy from CubeRRT’s solar cells, the known power draw from the satellite bus and payload subsystems, and the battery capacity. Telemetry and payload data buffers are monitored and downlinked at a known rate to a ground station at Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) to predict and prevent buffer overflow conditions. The current set of RFI locations is generated from existing radiometry datasets produced by previous nadir-observing missions (Jason and TRMM).

The general algorithm for power cycling divides payload operation into three 10 minute blocks within a ~90 minute orbit, resulting in a 30% duty cycle as illustrated in Figure 7. The payload orients the three blocks by first prioritizing observation at known RFI locations, followed by land observation. If RFI and land are exhausted for a particular orbit, operation during maximum solar availability is then selected. If the chosen sequence exceeds a battery depth of discharge threshold, the power sequence reverts to operating in peak sun. While the payload is operating, the payload sequentially sweeps through the ten radiometer bands in ~15-second increments.

Figure 7: Illustration of orbit power cycling (image credit: CubeRRT Team)
Figure 7: Illustration of orbit power cycling (image credit: CubeRRT Team)

This scheduling algorithm was propagated over the one year expected mission lifetime, with results shown in Figure 8. The payload exhibits an RFI efficiency of approximately 98%, defined as the percentage of time the payload operates when known RFI points are visible within the radiometer’s footprint. The payload will spend approximately 65% of its operational time observing landmasses. It will observe approximately 99% of available land (excluding the South Atlantic Anomaly around eastern South America) within the latitude limits of an ISS deployed orbit at least once over the year of operation.

Figure 8: CubeRRT coverage at 6.8 GHz following one year of operations (image credit: CubeRRT Team)
Figure 8: CubeRRT coverage at 6.8 GHz following one year of operations (image credit: CubeRRT Team)

The general workflow for uplinking commands and downlinking telemetry and payload data is shown in Figure 9. OSU will generate daily Planning Action Lists (PALs) based on running the CubeRRT scheduler. The PALs are sent to BCT to develop and validate the spacecraft command list, which is then sent to WFF for uplink to CubeRRT on the next available pass. Downlinked data is sent from WFF to BCT, where it is parsed and archived accordingly. OSU then processes the payload data and telemetry to verify that the radiometer is functioning nominally and that the backend processor is detecting and filtering RFI accurately. The final data product will include frequencies, unmitigated and mitigated brightness temperatures, latitude, longitude, pixel size, time, and RFI flags. These data products will be publicly available via web access to an OSU-hosted site (https://u.osu.edu/cuberrt/).

Figure 9: Process flow of CubeRRT operations, including commanding and data retrieval (image credit: CubeRRT Team)
Figure 9: Process flow of CubeRRT operations, including commanding and data retrieval (image credit: CubeRRT Team)

In summary, the CubeRRT system was designed to meet an ambitious set of mission objectives in order to demonstrate and mature spaceborne RFI mitigation technology. CubeRRT was launched in May 2018 on the OA-9 mission, docking successfully with ISS. Following deployment of CubeRRT into orbit, a commissioning phase will commence in which all systems are verified in advance of normal operations. Payload commanding will be developed by the OSU team, passed along to BCT for processing, and uplinked to CubeRRT via the WFF ground station. Downlinked telemetry and payload data will be received by WFF, processed initially by BCT, and handed off to OSU for ground-based verification of the RFI mitigation capability. A total of one year of mission operations is anticipated.



References

1) ”Four Projects Awarded Funding Under the In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) Program,” NASA, 2015, URL: https://esto.nasa.gov/files/
solicitations/INVEST_15/ROSES2015_InVEST_A42_awards.html

2) Lori Keesey, ”NASA’s next CubeSat mission to test ways of detecting and discarding Radio-Frequency Interference,” Feb. 24, 2016, URL: http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2016/02/24/
nasas-next-cubesat-mission-to-test-ways-of-detecting-and-discarding-radio-frequency-interference/

3) ”CubeRRT approved for launch,” Feb. 23, 2016, URL: https://ece.osu.edu
/news/2016/02/cuberrt-approved-launch

4) ”Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) selected by the Ohio State University to provide spacecraft for CubeRRT mission,” BCT, April 12, 2016, URL: http://bluecanyontech.com/
blue-canyon-technologies-selected-by-the-ohio-state-university-to-provide-spacecraft-for-cuberrt-mission/

5) J. T. Johnson, C. C. Chen, A. O’Brien, G. E. Smith, C. McKelvey, M. Andrews, C. Ball, Sidharth Misra, Shannon Brown, Jonathan Kocz, Robert Jarnot, Damon C. Bradley, Priscilla N. Mohammed, Jared F. Lucey, Jeffrey R. Piepmeier, ”The CubeSat Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) Mission,” Proceedings of the IEEE IGARSS (International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium) Conference, Beijing, China, July 10-15, 2016,

6) ”Navigating the Noise,” OSU, October 19, 2015, URL: https://ece.osu.edu/news/2015/10/navigating-noise

7) ”Small Packages to Test Big Space Technology Advances,” NASA, 17 May 2018, URL:  https://web.archive.org/web/20221207033235/http://www.nasa.gov/feature/small-packages-to-test-big-space-technology-advances/

8) ”NASA Sends New Research on Orbital ATK Mission to Space Station,” NASA/JPLRelease 18-037, 21 May 2018, URL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7134

9) ”Upcoming ELaNa CubeSat Launches,” NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative, URL: https://www.nasa.gov/content/upcoming-elana-cubesat-launches

10) ”CubeRRT mission ends, its impact on Earth science continues,” OSU, 30 November 2020, URL: https://si.osu.edu/cuberrt-mission-ends-its-impact-earth-science-continues

11) Joel T. Johnson, Chris Ball, Chi-Chih Chen, Christa McKelvey, Graeme E. Smith, Mark Andrews, Andrew O’Brien, J. Landon Garry, Sidharth Misra, Rudi Bendig, Carl Felten, Shannon Brown, Robert F. Jarnot, Jonathon Kocz, Kevin Horgan, Jared F. Lucey, Joe Knuble, Mike Solly, C. Duran-Aviles, Jinzheng Peng, Damon Bradley, Jeffrey R. Piepmeier, Doug Laczkowski, Matt Pallas, Nick Monahan, and Ervin Krauss, ”Real-Time Detection and Filtering of Radio Frequency Interference On-board a Spaceborne Microwave Radiometer: The CubeRRT Mission,” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, Volume 13, Published: 8 April, 2020, pp: 1610-1624, https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2020.2978016

12) C. McKelvey, C. Ball, J. T. Johnson, C.-C. Chen, A. O’Brien, G. E. Smith, M. Andrews, J. L. Garry, S. Misra, R. Bendig, C. Felten, S. Brown, R. Jarnot, J. Kocz, K. Horgan, M. Fritts, J. Lucey, C. Duran-Aviles, M. Solly, J. Piepmeier, D. Laczkowski, M. Pallas, E. Krauss, ”The CubeSat Radiometer RFI Technology Validation (CubeRRT) Mission: Mission Status,” 2019 USNC-URSI CFP National Radio Science Meeting, 9-12 January 2019, University of Colorado at Boulder (information provided by J. T. Johnson)

13) ”CubeRRT: the little satellite that could,” OSU, 2 October 2018, URL: https://www.ece.osu.edu/news/2018/10/cuberrt-little-satellite-could

14) ”NanoRacks Completes 14th CubeSat Deployment Mission from International Space Station,” NanoRacks, 13 July 2018, URL: http://nanoracks.com/14th-cubesat-deployment-from-iss/

15) Sidharth Misra, C. Ball, J. T. Johnson, C. C. Chen, A. O'Brien, G. Smith, C. McKelvey, M. Andrews, L. Garry, R. Bendig, C. Felten, S. T. Brown, R. Jarnot, J. Kocz, D. Bradley, P. Mohammed, J. Lucey, K. Horgan, M. Fritts, Q. Bonds, C. Duran-Aviles, M. Solly, J. R. Piepmeier, D. Laczkowski, M. Pallas, E. Krauss, ”The CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CUBERRT) Mission,” 98th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, USA, 8-11 January, 2018, URL: https://ams.confex.com/ams/98Annual/webprogram/Paper336562.html

16) ”CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT),” NASA News, 14 March, 2018, URL: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2575.html

17) Christopher D. Ball, Chi-Chih Chen, Christa J. McKelvey, Graeme E. Smith, Mark Andrews, Andrew J. O’Brien, J. Landon Garry, Joel T. Johnson, Sidharth Misra, Shannon T. Brown, Robert Jarnot, Rudi M. Bendig, Carl Felten, Jonathon Kocz, Jeffrey R. Piepmeier, Damon C. Bradley, Priscilla N. Mohammed, Jared F. Lucey, Kevin A. Horgan, Quenton Bonds, Carlos E. Duran-Aviles, Michael A. Solly, Matthew A. Fritts, Doug Laczkowski, Matthew Pallas, Ervin Krauss, ”The CubeSat Radiometer Radio Frequency Interference Technology Validation (CubeRRT) Mission,” Proceedings of the 32nd Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan UT, USA, Aug. 4-9, 2018, paper: SSC18-WKX-05, URL: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4294&context=smallsat
 


The information compiled and edited in this article was provided by Herbert J. Kramer from his documentation of: ”Observation of the Earth and Its Environment: Survey of Missions and Sensors” (Springer Verlag) as well as many other sources after the publication of the 4th edition in 2002. - Comments and corrections to this article are always welcome for further updates (eoportal@symbios.space).

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