Extreme weather events are one of the major character in climate change. Predicting these complex meteorological phenomena requires high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) models and the maximum amount of observational data available. Nowadays, in Brazil, several networks composed by different types of sensors provide these measurements, including electromagnetic passive sensors which are capable of detecting the lightningproducing radiation. Advanced processing units collect these data, locate the lightning discharges, integrate all the information, and store them in high-capacity and high-performance databases. These data are then assimilated into the NWP models to improve the forecast of extreme weather events. The RaioSat project intends to detect, for the first time, intra-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning flashes simultaneously, the so-called total lightning data, using an optical sensor and a VHF antenna onboard a CubeSat platform. A dense network of surface sensors that detect and locate total lightning data in Brazil, named the BrasilDAT dataset, will be used to validate the RaioSat data as a ground-truth reference. The RaioSat mission is expected to be in a LEO orbit at 650km and it will use a 3U-CubeSat aluminum frame (10x10x30cm) to accommodate the main platform and its payload. The main platform shall be solar and battery powered, have telemetry, commanding and housekeeping capabilities via an on-board computer, 3-axis attitude control and a GPS. The payload shall have a VHF passive antenna, ranging from 50 to 200MHz, and a spectral imaging camera (SIC) with high-performance image processing capacity and large data storage memory. SIC resolution shall be 2,048 x 1,536 pixels leading to a surface imaging of 80 m/pixel at 650km altitude. Also SIC shall have a spectral range from 700 to 900nm using a band-pass optical filter. Additionally, this paper also analyses upfront the stages of the space mission over the system life-cycle which consists basically of: (a) mission analysis, (b) life cycle analysis, (c) functional analysis, (d) design architecture analysis and, (e) concept of operations among others.
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