Title: The HARP (Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter) CubeSat Satellite
Presenting Author: J. Vanderlei Martins
Organization: UMBC
Co-Author(s): Roberto Fernandez-Borda, Lorraine Remer, Brent Mcbride, Leroy Sparr, Tim Nielsen

Abstract:
The HARP CubeSat is a demonstration for a Hyper-Angular Imaging Polarimeter funded by the NASA ESTO InVEST program, in preparation for the NASA ACE mission. The HARP instrument (built at UMBC) will fly in a 3U CubeSat spacecraft built at the Space Dynamics Lab (SDL). The HARP instrument can retrieve the Stokes parameters I, Q and U at 440, 550, 670, and 870nm with 94 degrees cross track Swath and +/-57deg along track range of viewing angles. HARP will have up to 60 along track viewing angles at 670nm (for fine angular measurements in water and ice clouds) and up to 20 angles at the other 3 wavelengths for aerosol retrievals. HARP will potentially be launched from the International Space Station in December 2016 (tentatively) and should operate for up to one year in space. In addition to the space version of HARP, the UMBC team is also building an aircraft version of the HARP instrument which is supposed to be integrated and fly on the ER-2 aircraft prior to the HARP CubeSat launch. The aircraft flights will be used to test the HARP hardware, validate our algorithms prior to launch, and potentially supplement the HARP orbital measurements. In this presentation we will discuss the HARP instrument and spacecraft, as well as show preliminary results from our laboratory measurements and hardware demonstration.