Status of the ESA Pretty Mission

• Published in: IGARSS 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium pp. 3345 - 3348
• Main Authors: Fragner, H., Dielacher, A., Moritsch, M., Wickert, J., Koudelka, O., Hoeg, P., Cardellach, E., Martin-Neira, M., Semmling, M., Walker, R., Lissi, F.P.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 26.09.2020
• Subjects: Antenna measurements; Correlation; CubeSat; Global navigation satellite system; GNSS; Instruments; Passive reflectometry; Phase altimetry; Reflection; Remote sensing; Sea measurements; Space vehicles
• ISSN: 2153-7003
• DOI: 10.1109/IGARSS39084.2020.9323454

PRETTY is a 3U Cubesat mission by a consortium of Technical University Graz, Seibersdorf Laboratories and RUAG Space GmbH with a planned launch in 2022. The satellite is based on the OPS-SAT platform [1] and will host two payloads, a radiation monitor and a passive reflectometer. Within the present publication we will discuss the current status of the reflectometer payload including the most relevant risks and also their mitigation by prototype developments and measurements. A first operational version of the instrument using commercial off the shelf (COTS) demonstration boards, hosting flight representative components for the RF front end as well as for the digital signal processing has been assembled and integrated with the corresponding hard- and software. While measurement results based on using the output of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) simulator as input to the PRETTY instrument have been presented earlier, we focus within this publication on the result of field tests on representative hardware in order to evaluate the expected L1 band environment for the mission.