Progetti di ricerca

Laboratorio di Cartografia, Fotogrammetria e Geographic Information System - GISlab

The G4S_2.0 project - financed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) - aims to perform a set of measurements in the field of gravitation with the two Galileo satellites GSAT0201 (Doresa) and GSAT0202 (Milena) exploiting the relatively high eccentricity (≅0.16) of their orbits with respect to that (≅ 0) of the other satellites of the Full Operational Capability (FOC) constellation and taking advantage of the accuracy of their on-board atomic clocks: two Passive Hydrogen Maser (PHM) clocks and two Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard (RAFS) clocks. On the contrary, the entire Galileo FOC constellation is considered to place constraints on the presence of dark matter in the Milky Way.

ISA is a three-axis high sensitivity accelerometer on board the MPO. It will support the study of the planet Mercury and also the test of Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) to an unprecedented level of accuracy. To perform such measurements it is necessary to combine data from four different instruments located on the MPO: star tracker, high resolution camera, accelerometer and transponder. The accelerometer will measure all inertial accelerations caused by the incoming solar visible radiation and by the planet albedo acting on the MPO structure, in order to transform it, a–posteriori, into a drag–free satellite.