Image Dataset taken by 1U CubeSat Constellation in the Low Earth Orbit
Description
This dataset contains images taken by four 1U CubeSats (3 satellites from BIRDS-3 and 1 satellite from BIRDS-4) that belong to the BIRDS Constellation of satellites. The camera mission payload employs a single 5-megapixel (MP) OV Arducam module, 8-bit Atmega2560V MCU, and 1Gb MT25QL01GB as non-volatile flash storage. Images are available at different resolutions such as 1280 x 960, 640 x 480, and 320 x 240. A commercial S-mount, M12 lens from Lensation was used for optics, however, BIRDS-3 and BIRDS-4 used different specifications. For BIRDS-3, the lens has a focal length of 2.9mm and an f2.0 aperture providing a diagonal field of view (DFOV) of 103º. The ground swath calculated from a 400 km orbit is about 700 km by 450 km. For BIRDS-4, the lens has a focal length of ¼ inch and an f1.8 aperture providing a diagonal field of view (DFOV) of 125º. The ground swath calculated from a 400 km orbit is about 800 km by 600 km. The CubeSats were deployed from International Space Station (ISS) into an orbit of altitude 400 km, inclination of 51.6°, and orbital duration of 92.6 minutes. The satellites do not have any attitude control, so the satellites are in free rotation at approximately 3 deg/s on each axis. The dataset contains 156 images from the BIRDS-3 constellation of satellites and 81 images from the BIRDS-4 satellite. The images have been named according to their resolution and basic classification into Earth images (ER), Horizon images (HZ), sunburn images (SB) and space images (SP). The images are unprocessed, raw images and the sizes of the images vary between 3kB for space images and up to 99kB for earth images.
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Steps to reproduce
The image data were acquired from four different satellites orbiting in Low Earth Orbit with an inclination of 51.6 degrees and a height of 400km or less. A commercial S-mount, M12 lens from Lensation was used for optics, however, BIRDS-3 and BIRDS-4 used different specifications. For BIRDS-3, the lens has a focal length of 2.9mm and an f2.0 aperture providing a diagonal field of view (DFOV) of 103º. The ground swath calculated from a 400 km orbit is about 700 km by 450 km. For BIRDS-4, the lens has a focal length of ¼ inch and an f1.8 aperture providing a diagonal field of view (DFOV) of 125º. The ground swath calculated from a 400 km orbit is about 800 km by 600 km.