At UTAT Space Systems, we hold ourselves accountable to responsibly spending funds gathered from the student levy. We’ve been hard at work creating and revising our strategy for the 2024-2025 academic year to ensure our program is financially sustainable, while allowing us to continue pursuing out core educational and research goals.

The mission a UTAT Space Systems is to build and launch one 3U CubeSat every undergraduate cycle. In addition to providing an unparalleled experience working hands-on on an actual satellite, our team also seeks to contribute in meaningful ways to climate change research with the novel optical payload we are building.

The FINCH EYE Hyperspectral imager is an instrument that is purpose-built by UTAT Space Systems to collect hyperspectral imagery of agricultural land in order to quantify crop residue cover. Accurately quantifying crop residue is critical for a number of purposes, such as sustainable farming practices, carbon sequestration assessment, and agricultural land use monitoring. An extensive literature review which the team presented at the 2022 SmallSat conference (Miles et al) demonstrated that there is currently poor availability of hyperspectral data in the 900nm-1700nm range for Canadian farmland. In 2022-2024 we’ve laid the groundwork design for a hyperspectral imager that is capable of collecting scientifically valuable data while being feasible to implement in a 3U CubeSat form factor. The innovative use of GRISM dispersive element allows us to achieve target specifications within challenging mass and volume restrictions, and will allow the team to be the first in the world to demonstrate the technological viability of this design for ultra-compact space-grade hyperspectral imagers.

Now, in 2024-2025, we are ready to begin prototyping work on a benchtop demonstrator of the optical payload. After assembling, aligning, and testing the demonstrator, we will be ready to proceed with the actual space-grade payload in Fall 2025. The following letter addresses the budgetary request for UTAT Space Systems, Optics Subsystem, for the development of the FINCH EYE hyperspectral imager payload.

Until further notice, the below information is redacted from General Members’ view.