Market assessment of the potential of an IR Radiometer to detect aerosols, volcanic ash and land surface heat emissions

较小规模卫星的出现正在彻底改变部署卫星监测陆地和地球大气中各种特征的成本和可行性。这些小型立方体卫星可以通过将大量立方体卫星装入火箭有效载荷或将其发送到国际空间站进行部署，从而具有成本效益。这些卫星既是小规模的(厘米尺寸)，又是一次性的(它们的轨迹意味着它们在部署后8个月到2年的时间里在地球大气层的任何地方烧毁)。因此，它们是展示新技术以及商业服务的理想选择，这些服务可能依赖于大型卫星星座，这些星座可以覆盖地球，并在单个单元无法有效部署或操作时留出一些冗余空间。牛津大学物理系一直在开发一种能够部署在立方体卫星内的红外辐射计，现在正在寻求将其用于商业和研究目的。因此，这项提议是为了了解在卫星内运行的这种仪器的商业可行性。最初的方法是着眼于辐射计数据的三个潜在市场：与天气有关的数据用户(包括使用火山灰数据围绕航班路线和时间做出决策的用户)，包括国家气象局、天气数据公司以及航空公司和空中交通管制员；可能对地球上的火灾和热量排放感兴趣的救灾组织；该项目将提供对这些用户的信息需求的详细了解，包括了解他们如何在其组织内利用这些信息、因此存在最大机会的具有最高潜在价值的领域，以及组织具体需要哪些数据，包括分辨率水平、重复次数和格式。在评估这些信息的同时，了解牛津知识产权的相对优势和市场竞争，我们将能够评估是否存在重大的商业机会。一旦评估完成，我们将能够继续开发即将推出的产品，并与商业和其他合作伙伴合作，交付导致长期产品开发和部署的初步演示任务。

The advent of smaller scale satellites is revolutionising both the cost and feasibility of deploying satellites to monitor a wide range of features both on land and in the earth's atmosphere. These small cubesats can be deployed cost-effectively through incorporating a large number of them into a rocket payload or sending them to the International Space Station for deployment from there. The satellites are both small scale (centimetre dimensions) and disposable (their trajectories mean that they burn up in the earth's atmosphere anywhere from 8 months to 2 years from deployment). They are therefore ideal for the demonstration of new technologies as well as for commercial services that may rely on large constellations of such satellites which can cover the earth and leave room for some redundancy should individual units fail to be deployed or operate effectively.The University of Oxford's Physics Department has been developing an infra-red radiometer capable of being deployed within a cubesat and is now looking to deploy this for both commercial and research purposes. This proposal is therefore to understand the commercial feasibility of such an instrument operating within a satellite. The initial approach is to look at three potential markets for radiometer data: the weather-related data users (including those using volcanic ash data for decision-making around the routes and timings of flights) which includes national meteorological services, weather data companies and also airlines and air traffic controllers; the disaster relief organisations which may be interested in fire and heat emissions on the earth; and the energy efficiency market which is interested in monitoring energy emissions, often from large buildings or industrial sites, and energy infrastructure.The project will provide a detailed understanding of the information requirements of these users, including understanding how they make use of this information within their organisations, the areas of highest potential value where the greatest opportunity therefore exists, and specifically what data the organisations require, including levels of resolution, repeat times and format. When this information is assessed alongside an understanding of the relative strengths of Oxford's IP and the competition in the market, we will be able to assess whether there is a significant commercial opportunity.Once this assessment is complete, we will be able to move on to develop the product for launch and to work with commercial and other partners to deliver an initial demonstration mission leading on to longer term product development and deployment.