Development of a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Imaging Payload with Onboard Image Classification and Processing

Climate change has occurred as a result of human activities. It can trigger unexpected disasters such as floods or drought. Further severe events may be avoided by monitoring climate change. A method to do that is monitoring the cloud coverage in some areas. In this paper, the development of a CubeSat payload that can monitor cloud coverage is presented. It contains a COTS camera module, microcontrollers, and a cloud classification algorithm. This payload is a joint research between Telkom University and Kyushu Institute of Technology under IEEE GRSS 2nd Student Grand Challenge. This payload has been implemented and tested and the result is the payload able to capture images in a long period and classify the cloud feature of each of them. Currently, it has reached the flight model stage and is ready to get further space environmental tests.