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Remote Sensing Based Methods to Retrieve UVSQ-SAT Cubesat Attitude to Map the Earth's Radiation Budget.
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  • Adrien Finance,
  • Mustapha Meftah,
  • Christophe Dufour,
  • Thomas Boutéraon,
  • Antoine Mangin
Adrien Finance
LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Mustapha Meftah
LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
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Christophe Dufour
LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
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Thomas Boutéraon
LATMOS Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
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Antoine Mangin
ACRI-ST---CERGA
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Abstract

The terrestrial energy balance represents a measure of the excess energy stored in the climate system. A possible measurement of this variable can be made at the top of the atmosphere by quantifying the imbalance between the incoming solar flux and the outgoing reflected and infrared flux. This is the objective of the UltraViolet and infrared Sensors at high Quantum efficiency on-board a small SATellite (UVSQ-SAT) mission, validating miniaturized technologies on-board a CubeSat with 1U standards (about 11 cm x 11 cm x 11 cm). This satellite was put into orbit in January 2021 by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launcher and is totally functional. In order to measure the various fluxes with accuracy it is necessary to know precisely the orientation of the satellite at each time. Indeed, the knowledge of this orientation makes it possible to dissociate the various fluxes and to correct them from the angle to the considered source (Earth, Sun). To do so, two methods were implemented to retrieve the satellite’s attitude based on Sun and Nadir pointing along with inertial measurement unit (IMU) data. To ensure more accurate knowledge of the attitude determination in every configuration (daylight and eclipse), neural networks were implemented based on the available sensors. A multilayer perceptron was thus trained in order to find the orientation of the satellite. Based on the attitude retrieved the different flux were computed at each time from the sensors signals. We present here the development and the outcomes of the neural network applied to in-orbit data recovered from the UVSQ-SAT mission.