The commissioning phase of IPERDRONE.0, a project conceived, funded and coordinated by the Italian Space Agency, has been completed. The nanosatellite, launched on August 16 from the Vandenberg base (California), aims to demonstrate the ability to perform rendezvous maneuvers and proximity operations.
The in-orbit functional tests of all subsystems have been successfully completed and the results obtained during the commissioning phase confirm the flight qualification of the technologies developed and the achievement, for each of them and for the system as a whole, of the maximum level of technological readiness: TRL 9. After the analysis of the results, which took place in September, the mission was given the green light for the operational phase.
“The achievement of this important result – says Marta Albano, Director of Contract Execution of the ASI project – demonstrates the high degree of competitiveness of the Italian industry capable of creating new miniaturized systems and technologies suitable to be embarked on small cubesats platforms. In the future,” Albano continues, “these structures will be able to enable services more quickly and at reduced costs than traditional missions.”
IPERDRONE was created by an Italian team including CIRA, the agent that aims at the further development of the program. “IPERDRONE is an important milestone for CIRA – comments Roberto Gardi, CIRA Project Manager – not only because it is the first project led by us that brings a satellite into orbit, but because this mission is the first step of a broader program. Future IPERDRONE missions – concludes Gardi – will implement additional capabilities that will include rendezvous and docking, in-orbit servicing and also controlled re-entry to Earth, for the recovery of small payloads”.
The technological jewel on board IPERDRONE – all made in Italy – is the ‘Perseus’ cold gas propulsion system which has been successfully activated several times and was developed in Italy by Tyvak in collaboration with the T4I company. Margherita Cardi, Project Manager of Tyvak International says “We are very proud of the results of this first phase of the IPERDRONE mission. The performance of these miniaturized technologies is very promising and lays a solid foundation not only for the next phases of the current mission, but also for the next ones, in which IPERDRONE will approach and maneuver with precision, to inspect existing space structures, such as, for example, the International Space Station”.
Kayser, another member of the industrial team, took care of safety issues and those related to the ground segment. Fabrizio Carrai, Project Manager at Kayser, says “An important step has been reached in IPERDRONE’s operations. The success of the commissioning starts the demonstration of IPERDRONE’s innovative maneuvering, inspection and re-entry capabilities. The technological maturity that has been achieved will allow the implementation of services of great value already in the next IPERDRONE missions such as the rendezvous with other objects in orbit and the return to earth of scientific results”.
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