spacecraft radio tracking & navigation

On these topics, several projects have been carried out over the years (in chronological order, oldest first):

• CUBATA: Project conducted with GMV for ESA's call on "Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM) Cubesat Opportunity Payloads (COPINS)", to study how to exploit two CubeSats carried from the AIM mission (now the HERA mission). The team's proposal, called CUBATA, involved the study of the gravity field of the binary asteroid Didymos and the determination of the change in momentum caused by the impact of the NASA DART mission on the smaller body (Dimorphos), through very accurate two-way intersatellite ranging and Doppler measurements carried out between two dedicated cubesats.

• ARES4SC: Project “Autonomous orbit determination system for a smallsat constellation”, funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and led by Argotec. The main goal of the study is to set up and test an innovative inter-satellite radio system, as well as to demonstrate its performance. The project includes the development of an orbital determination code specific to the proposed orbital configuration and the evaluation of the system's performance in terms of positioning accuracy for users on Mars. The study can also be extended to the case of the Moon or other planetary bodies, as the positioning of the constellation is ensured by the knowledge of the central planet's gravity field.

• Foster-DDOR: Project "Foster-DDOR: Utilization of a future optical ground station for plane-of-sky measurements to augment DDOR", funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), developed in conjuction with DLR. The project aims to verify the positioning performance achievable with a new angular measurements system for deep space probes, based on optical measurements taken with a telescope, through numerical simulations conducted with ESA's GODOT software. The goal is to compare this new system with the standard DDOR radiometric technique.

• ARCT5S: Project "Autonomous Ranging and Communication Technology for Simultaneous operations of Swarm of Small Sats in deep Space", funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and developed with Argotec. The goal of the project is to study and develop a telecomunication technology for swarms of small satellites in deep space which enable two-way communication and autonomous relative positioning among the nodes. This is a follow-on study of the ARES4SC project.