Costa Rica is world-renowned for its environmental conservation and its clean energy generation. The government-led programs such as the Environmental Services Payment Program has resulted in an increase of the country's forest coverage from 21% in 1987 to 51.4% in 2010. Additionally, the country has established an ambitious goal of becoming a carbon neutral entity by 2021. Many efforts have been developed to contribute to this objective, including Irazu, a project consisting of designing, manufacturing, launching and operating the first Central American satellite to monitor carbon fixation in an experimental forest plantation in Costa Rica. The Irazu project is an initiative of the Central American Association for Aeronautics and Space (ACAE) and the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC), along with many contributors from academia, government, and the private sector. Irazu uses a 1U CubeSat that will act as a Store and Forward system, to collect data from ground sensors in a remote location and forward them to a data analysis and visualization center in TEC. The ground sensors measure tree diameter growth, soil humidity, and meteorological parameters. The data collected is used to estimate the amount of carbon that the trees are absorbing and to observe how this is affected by meteorological variables. Furthermore, this data, along with the spacecraft operating parameters, will be published in a user-friendly website to promote science and technology for Costa Rica's future generations. This paper focuses on the final testing of the spacecraft, which is critical for launch certification, and mission operations. The final testing was performed at the Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering of the Kyushu Institute of Technology. Strict requirements set by the launch provider had to be met, which is why this phase included vibration testing, thermal vacuum testing and fit tests of the CubeSat in the JEM Small Satellite Orbital Deployer, among others. Furthermore, the process of obtaining the operating frequency and license of the satellite for a first-time applicant nation is explained. An overview of the operations is presented as well, including a summary of the ground sensor network and how they establish the communication link with the CubeSat, how the satellite stores the data, and how it forwards it to the research center at TEC.

In 2007, the Government of Costa Rica announced to the world its ambitious goal of turning into the first carbon neutral country by 2021. Following the announcement, governmental institutions, universities, NGOs and private companies have worked arduously on the creation of different initiatives to reach that goal. One innovative project is Irazú, consisting of the design, construction, launch, and operation of the first Central American satellite. The project is not just intended to enable a baseline for training scientists, engineers, and managers in the necessary skills to execute an end-to-end space project. It also aims to demonstrate a CubeSat Store & Forward (CS&F) System that enables transmission of biomass and carbon dioxide fixation data from a remote fast growth tree plantation in the lowlands of Costa Rica to a research facility for its post-processing and analysis. The Irazú project is led jointly by the Central American Association for Aeronautics and Space (ACAE) and the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC). It also involves a variety of national and international stakeholders from government, academia, and industry. This paper is a continuation of previous reports on Irazú that were presented at the Workshop on Small Satellite Programs at the Service of Developing Countries over the last five International Astronautical Congresses. The project has already reached major milestones, such as the approval of the final design presented in the Critical Design Review (CDR), successful assembly of the manufactured structure and the components received from different CubeSat component providers, and successful performance during various environmental tests. The mission and satellite system architecture for a CS&F system were defined, which included the three primary components: the remote station, the spacecraft, and the ground segment. Experts from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech) and Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) revised the design of Irazú. Advances in the Assembly, Integration & Testing (AI&T) phase are presented and discussed, which include the development of spacecraft components, testing of the communication link, assembly of the satellite and initial results of environmental testing. International cooperation is emphasized in this phase, because Costa Rican engineers carry out testing at the laboratories of the Kyushu Institute of Technology. Furthermore, advances in the satellite frequency coordination process and spacecraft registration for an emerging space nation are presented, as well as the lessons learned from the AI&T phase.