Early Results of a Wildfire Monitoring Microsatellite UNIFORM-1

UNIFORM (UNiversity International FORmation Mission) is a capacity building program in microsatellite field including satellites, ground stations, and data platform. The program, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, aims to increase the number of players in the small satellite community through education of both domestic and international young engineers, by providing them with an opportunity to study, build, and operate microsatellites. The first satellite of the program, UNIFORM-1 was launched on May 24th 2014. UNIFORM-1 is a 50-kg earth observation satellite whose mission is wildfiremonitoring using a microbolometer. Since then it has been in operation, successfully capturing several events on the ground including wildfires and volcanic activities. This paper presents in-orbit results of UNIFORM-1 mission, critical bus subsystems including EPS and AOCS, and lessons learned from its operations.