Climate - Commercial and Scientific Instrument Opportunities for Small Satellite Constellations

There is an economic and social impact in many areas in the world due to lack of information on local climate, and better understanding is widely believed to lead to cost savings and improved living standards. Despite the wealth of spacecraft data available today, many climate variables are still poorly monitored. Small satellites in constellation can help in filling data gaps, and also provides the important temporal resolution required. Such missions could be highly complementary to the NASA NEO and EU Copernicus programs, and their data can be commercially valuable, opening up the potential for novel business models and services. Small satellites technology now makes it possible to carry sophisticated optical and radio sensing instruments, collect and process large quantities of data on-board. Organizations such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) emphasize the need for systematic, high-quality climate observations. However, most commercial missions lack the necessary measurement accuracy, calibration and understanding of data uncertainty to contribute meaningfully to such international efforts. Key variables where there is a lack of information are identified as those related to the water cycle, carbon cycle, ecosystem loss, and atmospheric composition. SSTL is already working on several funded missions and initiatives that can form the building blocks of a more comprehensive climate science constellation. HydroGNSS for the European Space Agency will have two small satellites to start monitoring several of these key variables. The HERCHI instrument development is aimed at the development of a hyperspectral imager, to aid monitoring of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gasses. The UK-Australia Aquawatch joint study initiative is focused on a system that addresses hydrology and water quality assessments. And finally, the DarkCARB spacecraft for SatVu, with the first one launched in 2023 and the next two in production, allow surface temperature mapping at high resolution. This paper explores the potential of bringing these and other satellites together into a lightly coordinated constellation to provide multi-variable climate observations for scientific and commercial users, and provides details on the payloads, and how they combine to provide a comprehensive and valuable data set when combined.