The CubeSat project
As part of the CubeSat project, she contributed to the development of a CubeSat in Wuerzburg (UWE-1) and a CubeSat in Trieste (Atmocube). The CubeSat in Wuerzburg (UWE-1) was successfully launched into Earth's orbit on the 27th Oct 2005. Atmobe in Triest was selected by the European Space Agency to partecipate to the maiden flight of the new European launcher Vega. The CubeSats is a cubic nano-satellite that had dimensions of 10-13 cm side with a total weight of 1-2 kg. AtmoCube represents an innovative measurement system for the study of the Earth atmosphere starting from altitude of the order of 600 km.
Thanks to the Leonardo da Vinci European Programme Fellowship she joined the Institute fuer Informatik Julius-Maximilians-University (Wuerzburg Germany) for 6 months.
In the development effort for the pico-satellite within the CubeSat program, she designed a test procedure for testing batteries and solar cells.
During my Master thesis at C.A.R.S.O. in Trieste she performed the analysis and design of this pico-satellite in order to study the Earth's atmosphere.
The goal was to build a precise map of the Earth magnetic field and of the flux of radiation impinging on a dosimeter.
For more details, please have a look at her Master thesis: "Atmocube: analisi di un satellite per lo studio dell'atmosfera terrestre" (translation: "AtmoCube: analysis and design of a picosatellite in order to study the Earth's atmosphere. " (pdf in italian)