IOD-1 GEMS
Orbital Micro Systems
First commercially owned/operated space-based passive microwave radiometer, flown as a 3U CubeSat payload.
Technical specifications
- Form factor
- 3U CubeSat
- Mass
- ~4 kg
- Launch date
- 17 April 2019 (Antares/Cygnus NG-11)
- ISS deployment
- 3 July 2019
- Design life
- 6 months (operated 2019-2021)
- Radiometer frequency
- 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, 8 channels
- Spatial resolution
- 15 km
- Scanning method
- cross-track, spinning parabolic reflector at 1 Hz
- Power
- < 8 W
- Downlink
- S-band, ~4.5 Mbit/s usable (2.2-2.3 GHz), ~950 MB/day
- Structure/OBC/EPS
- CSL 3U bus
- Solar cells
- 28x Spectrolab UTJ cells
- Battery
- 30 Whr
- ADCS
- coarse/fine sun sensors, magnetorquers, reaction wheels (pointing <0.5°/<2°)
- VHF/UHF radio
- CPUT VUTRX, 9.6 kbit/s
About
IOD-1 GEMS (In-Orbit Demonstration-1, Global Environmental Monitoring System) is Orbital Micro Systems’ 3U CubeSat microwave-radiometer payload, described as the first commercially owned and operated space-based passive microwave radiometer. Launched in April 2019 and deployed from the ISS in July 2019, it operated through 2021, scanning the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line across 8 channels with a spinning parabolic reflector for cross-track scanning, delivering atmospheric temperature and moisture profile data at 15km spatial resolution to demonstrate the viability of CubeSat-scale weather sensing.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.
