Our Projects

-Flow your curiosity!

IKUNS-LEDSAT (ASI, Kenya, United Nations)

Optical observation and orbit determination of LEO objects are extremely challenging to achieve. A CubeSat with LEDs on-board will demonstrate improvements in tracking and measurements of LEO satellites being a calibration target for orbit determination. New techniques for LED-based attitude reconstruction and back-up communication with ground will be tested

URSA MAIOR(QB50-H2020, ASI)

•Main payload: mNLP (multi-Needle Langmuir Probes) science unit

•Technological demonstrations:

1. MEMIT (MEms MIcro Thruster): cold gas microthruster for attitude control equipped with MEMS nozzle and valves.

2. ARTICA (Aerodynamic Re-entry Technology In Cubesat Application): plug-and-play deorbiting system based on a drag sail.

3. In-house developed EPS and OBCs/OBDH based on a fault-tolerant distributed architecture. The boards use circuitry for over-current limitation, in order to lower the hazards of single event latchups (SELs). Moreover, proper hardware and software strategies allow to mitigate single event upset (SEUs) and transient (SETs) effect.

4. Two CMOS cameras for Earth observation from space.

EQUO

•maintaining the dynamical data base on space object orbits;

•estimation of real population of artificial objects on high geocentric orbit;

•determining of possible origin of the discovered objects and verifying the distribution and evolution;

•estimation of the level of danger caused by space debris objects for operational spacecrafts;

•control of implementation of measures directed on decreasing the space debris population;

•attitude estimation from light-curves measurements for future ADR mission.

STRATONAV (STRATOspheric NAVigation Experiment) is a scientific project aimed at evaluating the performances of the VOR navigation system at stratospheric altitudes.

The experiment flew on the BEXUS 22 balloon on October 5th 2016, gathering data from the several VOR stations around the area using two VOR receivers.

1KUNS

1KUNS is an extension of "IKUNS - Italian-Kenyan University NanoSatellite", a project run by the University of Nairobi in collaboration with "La Sapienza" University of Rome and the Italian Space Agency, under the Convention for managing activities at the Broglio Space Centre in malindi(Kenya).

To develop a Primary Payload for Earth Observation and to develop Technological Demonstration Secondary Payloads in house-developed and manufactured at Sapienza, University of Rome

SAPIENZA SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATORY NETWORK(SSON)

The need of an observatory network, due to the constant follow up required by space debris tracking and monitoring has pushed our laboratory to establish several collaborations with external observatories spread all around the world. Moreover a large number of owned ground based observing stations has been implemented in he Last years.

Such large number of ground based optical observing stations requires the optimization of the data acquisition sessions. To this end our team developed a scheduler tool, which can plan the observation knowing the observatory features and environmental conditions.