MKA-N

MKA-N (“malyi kosmicheskiy apparat – nano”, small nano-class spacecraft) is a pair of CubeSat-standard microsatellites built by Dauria Aerospace subsidiary NPP Dauria under a December 2012 Roscosmos state R&D contract (“Kubsat-Nano”). The contract called for two nanosatellites carrying Earth observation payloads imaging in three spectral bands at 10-50 meter resolution with high-speed downlink of target data. Dauria’s engineers substantiated the feasibility of building satellites capable of real operational high-cadence Earth imaging at 22-meter resolution in CubeSat form, addressing demanding requirements on payload throughput, attitude determination and control accuracy, image co-registration accuracy, and signal-to-noise/MTF image quality along with high-rate data downlink. The satellites are designed for piggyback launch using a universal deployment and separation device under development by Dauria. By the end of 2015 the MKA-N satellites had completed testing and were being prepared for delivery to the customer, representing one of the first attempted operational Earth-observation missions built in the CubeSat standard.