CTE Mission: CubeSat

Mapping homeless populations in high-risk fire zones

In a challenge to build technical skills for careers in space and beyond, the CTE Mission: CubeSat competition was taken on by the Clark Magnet High School's GIS and Remote Sensing team. After developing a project proposal for the competition, our team was awarded one of five finalist positions nationwide and challenged to implement our mission.

This website displays the CTE Mission: CubeSat finalists and their projects. By clicking the explore option on the bottom right-hand side of the screen, the website can be navigated.

Los Angeles City is home to thousands of people who are considered homeless and do not have easy access to any shelter to protect them against natural disasters. In addition, California is known to be a high-risk fire state with many devastating wildfires over the years. This being said, we came to the realization that there must be a portion of the homeless population that resides in these high-risk fire areas. Through this realization, we began our project to document homeless encampments within high-risk fire zones and determine if they are occupied or not by using infrared remote sensing.

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This map was created and used by our team to determine the high-risk fire zones in the Los Angeles city area. The map is interactive and contains data enriched popups that display the name of the fire and information on homeless populations in the area that are shaded. This can be accessed by clicking the shaded regions on the map.

After determining our mission for this project, we set out to obtain a proof of concept. We wanted to be certain that the infrared camera would be capable of capturing the thermal images of the homeless encampments. To do this, we equipped a drone with an infrared camera and flew it over the homeless encampments in the Ventura Willougby Preserve. The flight was successful, and we were reassured that our camera would be able to pick up on any infrared signatures in the homeless encampments. A video of the infrared camera in action can be seen  here .

This map displays the flight path of our recon drone and can be interacted with by using this  link .

This is a still image of the infrared imagery shown in the video.

Since the reconnaissance flight was a success, we were ready to begin building our CubeSat. The components of our CubeSat were built and put together by our team, and the frame of the CubeSat was made by our project partners at Grace Brethren High School. 

The pictures on the left show students working remotely at home building the XinaBox, the two pictures in the middle are our project partners' space lab at Grace Brethren High School, and the picture on the right is of our final code checks before the flight.

Before conducting flight operations, we set out to determine a study site that was suited for our criteria and created a site suitability analysis, which can be seen below. To begin with, we wanted our study area to be within a 15-mile radius of Clark Magnet High School to keep commuting distances short. This was achieved by adding a 15-mile buffer radius around the school (slide 2). Since our data must be collected from the air, we needed to take into consideration and map any FAA UAS controlled air spaces in our 15-mile buffer zone (slide 3). Next, we mapped open spaces (green areas) in which a drone or payload-carrying device could fly, and ruled out the open spaces which resided in controlled airspaces. (slide 4-5). After determining the open spaces in which we could fly, we determined which areas are considered to be moderate to high-risk fire areas (orange hexagons), and defined any intersecting open spaces within wildfire risk areas (slide 6-7). Running these geoprocesses identified the open spaces which met all of our criteria in purple. (slide 8). 

The Hansen Dam Recreation Area fit perfectly into our site suitability analysis except that it was in an FAA UAS controlled airspace. To solve this issue we decided to utilize a weather balloon rather than a drone. After setting up the CubeSat and mounting on the balloon, we began our first flight. This flight took place on April 28th, 2021 at 5:30 pm. The GPS on our CubeSat did not work properly so we improvised and used an app called Strava to map the path of the balloon during its flight. In addition to the GPS issues, the operations were cut short due to heavy winds which can be seen in this  video . The launch can also be seen  here .

To further improve our data, we returned to the Hansen Dam Recreational Area for a second flight. We followed the same process as the last flight but decided to attach a phone which was recording GPS coordinates on Strava to the CubeSat payload. This provided us with more accurate data of the flight path and GPS coordinates of each image. The second flight took place on May 7th, 2021 at 7:30 pm. Surprisingly, during our second flight, a wildfire had started which caused us to limit our flight time and elevation as it may have interfered with any air support which was on hand to aid in the containment of the fire.

This map was created using the geoprocessed data from our second flight. The flight path is illustrated by the white line with yellow pins; zooming in reveals 30 square foot tessellations on the map. The red squares on the map represent coordinates where thermal camera readings were at least 15% warmer than the ambient temperature. These represent locations of homeless encampments. 

Hansen Dam Flight 2-Analysis-Copy

This map displays the flight path of our recon drone and can be interacted with by using this  link .

This is a still image of the infrared imagery shown in the video.

The pictures on the left show students working remotely at home building the XinaBox, the two pictures in the middle are our project partners' space lab at Grace Brethren High School, and the picture on the right is of our final code checks before the flight.