Mission Operations and Science Plan for the MeznSat CubeSat Mission for Greenhouse Gases Monitoring

This paper describes the concept of operation and science data processing chain for the MeznSat mission, a 3U CubeSat for greenhouse gas monitoring. The mission aims to use a shortwave infrared spectrometer operating in the Short-Wave Infra-Red (SWIR) range of 1000-1650 nm to find the concentrations of atmospheric gases, namely water vapor (H
₂
O), Carbon Dioxide (CO
₂
), Oxygen (O
₂
), and Methane (CH
₄
) above the UAE. The satellite also carries an RGB camera that is used throughout the mission to validate the spectrometer angle and orientation and provide geolocation accuracy. In this work, a description of the orbital analysis and the scheme followed to activate the payloads throughout the mission is discussed, along with the process followed to acquire the data from the satellite and retrieve the count data. The concentrations of the gases are then estimated using a retrieval process that uses a forward radiative transfer model to create a lookup table to map the gas concentrations to their corresponding synthetic spectra produced by the forward model.