Design and Operations of ArcticSat, a Passive Radiometer Cubesat for Northern Canada

The Arctic communities of Canada have generational knowledge of sea ice passed down to ensure their safety. However, climate change has significantly impacted the livelihood of these communities, who rely on sea ice for travel, hunting, and fishing. While other satellite missions have been collecting sea ice data, ArcticSat strives to provide direct and fast data access for northern communities, particularly through co-development with the community of Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut, Canada. This paper describes the design specifications and Concept of Operations (ConOps) for ArcticSat, a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$10 ~\text{cm} \times 10 ~\text{cm} \times 30 \text{cm}$</tex> CubeSat carrying a passive radiometer in a polar orbit. ArcticSat will use a single reaction wheel to point the radiometer toward a ground target. The collected data will be downlinked to the C-CORE ground station in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. The mission's frequent passes over the ground station allow fast access to the sea ice data, which will be delivered to northern communities through SIKU, the Indigenous knowledge social network.