Water quality management using nanosatellites

Abstract

Within the context of bilateral cooperation between Turkey and Tunisia, a Project called “Development of Intelligent Control Modules for Nano Satellites” was initiated in May 2015. Due to political changes in both countries the Project could effectively start on May 2016. The project aims at developing nanosatellite based water quality monitoring within the MENA region. Turkish side consists of researchers from Istanbul Technical University, while Tunisian team has two intuitions, University Monastir of and University of Sfax. Project involves 8 team visits, 4 in each country. In those meetings, teams agreed on a mission and related payload. The mission is monitoring dam water parameters (levels, salinity, pollution, temperature, etc.) in Tunisia using ground sensor data. The Tunisian team is responsible of development of ground sensor system and contributing to the control of the nanosatellite. Space segment main duty is store and forward. Therefore a 2U CubeSat is found appropriate. Currently ground sensors are foreseen to transmit data in VHF band. However based on recent developments, a transmission at 920 MHz is also of interest.