Mini-EUSO will observe the Earth in the UV range (300 - 400 nm) offering the opportunity to study a variety of atmospheric events such as Transient Luminous
Events (TLEs), meteors and marine bioluminescence. Furthermore it aims to search for Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) above $10^{21}$ eV and Strange Quark Matter (SQM).
The detector is expected to be launched to the International Space Station in August 2019 and look at the Earth in nadir mode from the UV-transparent window of the Zvezda module of the International Space Station.

The instrument comprises a compact telescope with a large field of view ($44^{\circ}$), based on an optical system employing two Fresnel lenses for light
collection. The light is focused onto an array of 36 multi-anode photomultiplier tubes (MAPMT), for a total of 2304 pixels and the resulting signal is converted
into digital, processed and stored via
the electronics subsystems on-board. In addition to the main detector, Mini-EUSO contains two ancillary cameras for
complementary measurements in the near infrared (1500 - 1600 nm) and visible (400 - 780 nm) range and also a $8 \times 8$ SiPM imaging array.