esa – Politecnico di Milano – Progress in Research

Oxygen from lunar regolith

Posted on 31/07/202313/09/2023 by admin

Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) and Politecnico di Milano have signed an agreement concerning the ambitious project to develop and validate one of the key technologies to enable long-term human presence on our natural satellite. The ORACLE (Oxygen Retrieval Asset by Carbothermal-reduction in Lunar Environment) project is aimed at extracting oxygen from the lunar regolith, the fragmented rock that cover the surface of the Moon, according to a process already studied in the laboratory by the ASTRA group of Politecnico di Milano.

Now, under the guidance of ASI, a validation in the target operational environment, i.e., the surface of the Moon, is to be implemented by the end of this decade.

In Situ Resources Utilisation, i.e., the on-site extraction and exploitation of resources, is a key capability for sustainable exploration such as the one we are planning for the Moon. In this sense, we expect the ORACLE to be of global interest in a future perspective and to enable Italy, among the first in the world, to hold a strategic technology. In this new season of return to the Moon, our country is making the best preparations to participate, and ORACLE will give us the opportunity to consolidate our leading role in large-scale programmes such as Artemis.
Raffaele Mugnuolo, Head of the ASI’s Exploration, Orbiting and Surface Infrastructures and Scientific Satellites Unit

With this agreement, ASI and Politecnico undertake to collaborate right from the initial stages in the design and definition of the interface aspects of the lander that will host a preliminary version of the system. In the upcoming years development activities will be carried out that will be entrusted to an industrial partner. The goal is to build a demonstrator that can be launched by 2028 making use of one of the commercial flight opportunities among those currently under development in several countries.

The ORACLE project represents a virtuous path of research and technological development that demonstrates how innovation can be realised through the synergetic actions of complementary worlds such as the University, ASI and, in the future, the national industrial sector. ORACLE further confirms that the collaboration between the two institutions in the aerospace field creates opportunities to put the technical skills and research of Politecnico di Milano at the service of consolidating Italy’s role in such a strategic sector worldwide. The challenge is considerable, and just as intense are the motivation and enthusiasm of the team that will actively work for the return to the Moon, which is a unique historical moment in the space exploration scenario and follows up on the results obtained in the laboratory to produce the first lunar water droplet ‘on-site’.
Michèle Lavagna, Scientific Project Co-ordinator Project for Politecnico di Milano

Launch of the juice mission to Jupiter

Posted on 28/04/202313/06/2023 by admin

On 14 April, at 14:14 Italian time, JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer), was launched from the Kourou base in French Guiana, the European Space Agency probe that will reach the Jupiter system in 2031 to make detailed observations of the gaseous planet and three of its moons: Callisto, Europa and Ganymede.

The Politecnico di Milano is also involved in the mission: researchers at the MetroSpace Lab in the Department of Mechanics, on the Lecco Campus, helped to design of one of the main instruments on board the probe: MAJIS (Moons and Jupiter Imaging Spectrometer), an imaging spectrometer that operates on two different spectral channels, near infrared and infrared. The instrument was built by a French and Italian consortium, (French Principal Investigator, Francois Poulet from the IAS in Paris, with Italian Co-Principal Investigator, Giuseppe Piccioni from the INAF in Rome) with Belgian support; the optical head of the instrument is the Italian contribution.

In particular, the team from the Politecnico led the initial phase of the thermomechanical project, studying a passive cooling system capable of maintaining the infrared sensor at temperatures below 90 K (-183.15 °C) and the entire optical system at temperatures below 140 K (-133.15 °C), even though the satellite will operate at close to Earth temperatures.

The executive design and construction of the instrument were conducted by Leonardo, funded by the Italian Space Agency, under the supervision of the scientific team, within which the Politecnico group will remain active during the flight and operational phase of the mission, first to refine the thermal model of the instrument, using the data collected during the cruise phase, and then to support the planning of the observations.

Photo: ESA – S. Corvaja

HYPER-5G: developing improved positioning systems

Posted on 27/06/202230/06/2022 by admin

Precise positioning will undergo exponential growth with the advent of autonomous vehicles, drones, robots and the technological development of smart devices, cities and industries. The transition from the professional to the consumer sphere will necessarily lead to the demand for precise positioning capabilities in both outdoor and indoor, open-sky and urban areas.

Politecnico di Milano is participating in the project HYPER-5G, HYbrid Positioning Engine Running on 5G and GNSS, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), under the Navigation Innovation and Support Program (NAVISP).

The HYPER-5G project aims at studying, designing and developing the algorithms and systems needed to implement a precise positioning engine to jointly use multi-constellation GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) and 5G observations, also exploiting GNSS PPP-RTK techniques.

The project aims to merge GNSS, the state-of-the-art technology for positioning applications, and 5G, the new generation of cellular communication networks, for positioning purposes with the goal of overcoming the limits that individually characterize the two technologies and augmenting the overall performance.

The 5G-GNSS data fusion algorithm planned in HYPER-5G represents a solution for precise positioning scalable to an unlimited number of users with large-scale coverage.

The project consortium includes GRed, algoWatt and Politecnico di Milano, which brings in a multi-disciplinary team:

IoTLab, an interdepartmental laboratory of the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering – DIG (Prof. Monica Nicoli) and the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB (Prof. Mattia Brambilla), with expertise on 5G positioning.
Geolab, an interdepartmental laboratory of the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering – DICA, Aerospace Science and Technology – DAER, Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering – DABC, Electronics, Information and Bioengineering – DEIB, Energy – DENG, Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering – DIG, of which Prof. Ludovico Biagi (DICA) brings expertise on GNSS techniques.

The research on 5G positioning is also supported by the collaboration with Vodafone Italia.

HYPER-5G projectproject website

In 2024 Politecnico is back to Space with ESA

Posted on 15/06/202111/10/2021 by admin

After contributing to Rosetta Mission, in 2024 Politecnico di Milano will be back to deep space. That year ESA, the European Space Agency, will launch the Hera spacecraft towards binary asteroid Didymos, the smallest ever visited object by a space mission: an asteroid of approximately 780 metres diameter, having a tiny moon Dimorphos of approximately 160 metres. After arrival, Hera will release two shoebox-sized satellites, namely CubeSats.

The Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano is part of the industrial team selected by ESA to develop the “CubeSat Milani” onboard Hera. The team, led by Prof. Francesco Topputo, will be responsible of the design of the CubeSat’s trajectory and its GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control) system. The CubeSat is named after Andrea Milani, professor of orbital mechanics at University of Pisa, who passed away in 2018.

The employment of CubeSats in such mission is extremely ambitious and is a fundamental step towards the future development of low-cost exploration of the Solar System, yet providing high science and technology return. For the first time in space exploration history, the CubeSats ought to be able to operate autonomously, more than 10 million kilometres away from Earth, in the yet unexplored and largely unknown binary asteroid environment.

From the scientific point of view, the CubeSat will provide invaluable insights on the physical and dynamical properties of Didymos and Dimorphos. The binary system will be investigated by collecting data and close-up images near the surface of the two asteroids. In particular, the CubeSat will act as building block to InterSatellite Link, the first interplanetary, intersatellite communication link between Hera and its two CubeSats. The CubeSat will act as a technology demonstrator and will test for the first time innovative GNC algorithms, to support the autonomous guidance, navigation, and control of the CubeSat in deep space. More, the impossibility to have direct communication with Earth ground station, but only through relay with Hera, and its limited propulsion capability, make the Second CubeSat aboard Hera one of the most interesting technological challenges of the incoming years.

Hera is the European contribution to the joint ESA-NASA mission AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment), which will be the first ever planetary defense mission. Its goal is to test and validate the planetary defense technique referred to as “kinetic impactor”, which consist in deflecting the orbital path of an asteroid by means of a high-velocity impact.