AMICal Sat: A Sparse RGB Imager on Board a 2U CubeSat to Study the Aurora

Abstract

AMICal sat, a dedicated 2U CubeSat, has been developed, in order to monitor the auroral emissions with a dedicated imager. It aims to help reconstructing the low-energy electron fluxes up to 30 keV in the Earth auroral regions. It includes an imager entirely designed in the Grenoble University Space Center. The imager uses a 1.3-Mpixels sparse RGB CMOS detector and a wide-field objective ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f=22.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm). The satellite platform has been built by the Polish company Satrevolution. Launched 3 September 2020 from Kuru (French Guyana) on board the Vega flight 16, it produced its first images in October 2020. The aim of this article is to describe the design of the payload, especially the optics and the proximity electronics, and to describe the use of the payload for space weather purpose. A preliminary analysis of a first image showing the relevance of such an instrument for auroral monitoring is performed. This analysis allowed us to reconstruct from one of the first images the local electron input flux at the top of the atmosphere during the exposure time.