MIMAN (Cubesatyonsei)

MIMAN [Yonsei University]

MIMAN (Monochrome Imaging for Monitoring Aerosol by Nanosatellite) is a South Korean 3U-CubeSat for monitoring fine dust on the Korean Peninsula designed by Yonsei University.

Fine dust, a type of aerosol, is one of the factors of climate change, and has been designated as a group 1 carcinogen by the WHO. Accordingly, research on the generation and flow of the fine dust is being actively conducted around the world. To study the spatiotemporal distribution of fine dust, observation over a wide area using satellites is required. Satellites of South Korea that provides fine dust observation data include GEO-KOMPSAT 2B (GK-2B), a geostationary satellite launched in 2020. When observing fine dust in geostationary orbits, although the temporal resolution is high, only a specific area can be observed, and it has the disadvantage of securing relatively low spatial resolution compared to low orbits. If a low-orbit fine dust observation system that can capture high spatial resolution is established, observation data for the entire world can be provided. In addition, data with high spatial resolution can be utilized to remove clouds from data with relatively low spatial resolution. Currently, Korea does not have a low-orbit satellite system capable of observing the East Asian region with high spatial resolution. If this is built as a CubeSat-based platform, it will be possible to increase the accessibility to observation data. With this goal in mind, the Cubeset Yonsei team at Yonsei University developed the CubeSat MIMAN.

MIMAN is a 3U cube satellite with dimensions of 10 cm × 10 cm × 34 cm. It is equipped with an optical camera for CubeSat and antennas for communication, and transmits images with a resolution of 200 m or less in the area of 400 km × 400 km above the West Sea once every two days to the ground. The image sent down to the ground is provided to the fine dust research team after appropriate correction so that it can be used as research data.