Medium-sized aperture camera for earth observation

Satrec Initiative and ATSB have been developing a medium-sized aperture camera (MAC) for an earth observation payload on a small satellite. Developed as a push-broom type high-resolution camera, the camera has one panchromatic and four multispectral channels. The panchromatic channel has 2.5m, and multispectral channels have 5m of ground sampling distances at a nominal altitude of 685km. The 300mm-aperture Cassegrain telescope contains two aspheric mirrors and two spherical correction lenses. With a philosophy of building a simple and cost-effective camera, the mirrors incorporate no light-weighting, and the linear CCDs are mounted on a single PCB with no beam splitters. MAC is the main payload of RazakSAT to be launched in 2005. RazakSAT is a 180kg satellite including MAC, designed to provide high-resolution imagery of 20km swath width on a near equatorial orbit (NEqO). The mission objective is to demonstrate the capability of a high-resolution remote sensing satellite system on a near equatorial orbit. This paper describes the overview of the MAC and RarakSAT programmes, and presents the current development status of MAC focusing on key optical aspects of Qualification Model.