The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society “Open PocketQube Kit”: An affordable open source approach to Earth observation missions [Education in Remote Sensing]

Abstract

CubeSats are now serving a wide range of applications beyond their original educational intent. Private companies are deploying large constellations for Earth observation and machine–to–machine communications. Their growing popularity and increased performance have raised the demand for reliability and costs. Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find subsystems providers, and the trend is to find fully integrated platforms on the market. Therefore, paradoxically, CubeSats are becoming less accessible to universities and research institutions than a few years ago. To overcome these problems, the PocketQube concept was invented. PocketQubes measure 50 × 50 × 50 mm³ and offer a cost-effective option, notably for education. These picosatellites can perform simple missions like Internet of Things communications or upper-atmosphere observations, ionosphere studies, or signal integrity tasks, while students face design challenges similar to larger satellites. This article presents the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) “Open PocketQube Kit” educational initiative. Developed by the NanoSat Lab at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), it is an affordable open source educational kit featuring a complete PocketQube structure with all the subsystems: an electrical power supply (EPS), attitude determination and control system (ADCS), an STM32-based onboard computer (OBC), long-range (LoRa) communications, and payload. Three different PocketQube models have been developed: PoCat-1, with a video graphics array (VGA) camera, and PoCat-2 and PoCat-3 for monitoring radio-frequency interference (RFI) at the L-band (1–2 GHz) and K-band (24–25 GHz) to track 5G spectrum emissions.