LICIACube

Access the LICIACube SOC
(Partially restricted access)

For any information please contact
Angelo Zinzi


Mission overview

LICIACube – the Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids - is a space mission of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), based on a 6U cubesat part of the NASA DART (Double Asteroid Redirect Test) mission, whose goal is the validation of the Kinetic Impact technique for Planetary Defense purposes. To this aim, the NASA DART probe, developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory APL of the Johns Hopkins University, will impact on Dimorphos, the secondary member of the (65803) Didymos binary asteroid system.

LICIACube contribution is devoted to enhance the information gained from the main probe impact, so supporting the validation of the deflection technique, and to allow dedicated scientific investigations. DART probe has been launched on November 24th 2021 and LICIACube has been hosted as piggyback during the 10 months of interplanetary cruise. It will be released several days before the impact and autonomously guided towards the target, to collect pictures of the post-impact scenario. Several unique images of the effects of the DART impact on the asteroid can be collected and transmitted towards Earth, such as e.g. the formation and the development of the plume potentially determined by the impact itself.

Public images

 On September 26th 2022 LICIACube, as the first Italian deep space mission, succesfully acquired images before and after the impact of DART,performing a flyby of Dimorphos. In the following some public images taken by LEIA and LUKE are shown (credits ASI/NASA)"
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The image acquired by LEIA somewhat similar to the "Earthrise" taken by William Anders during Apollo 8 mission
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The Pleiades acquired by LUKE
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Animated gif of two LEIA images showing the change in brightness of Dimorphos soon before and soon after the impact (LICIACube-Dimorphos distance = 1020 km)
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Windowed LEIA image observing Didymos, Dimorphos and the ejecta plume (LICIACube-Dimorphos distance = 79.8 km)
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LUKE image of Didymos and Dimporhos with the ejecta plume, acquired at a distance of 102 km
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LUKE image of Didymos and Dimporhos with the ejecta plume, acquired at a distance of 56.7 km
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Windowed LUKE image of Didymos and Dimporhos with the ejecta plume, acquired at a distance of 56.7 km
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LUKE image of Didymos and Dimporhos with the ejecta plume, acquired at a distance of 54 km

SOC activities description

LICIACube is an ASI project, whose design, integration and test has been assigned to the aerospace company Argotec. The scientific team is led by National Institute of Astrophysics INAF (OAR, IAPS, OAA, OAPd, OATs) with the support of IFAC-CNR and University Parthenope of Naples. The team is enriched by University of Bologna, for orbit determination and satellite navigation, and Polytechnic of Milan, for mission analysis and optimization.

LICIACube will be the first Italian autonomous mission in deep space, also for the Ground Segment, with data archiving and processing managed by the Space Science Data Center (SSDC) of ASI.
The main duties of the LICIACube SOC will be to:
  • provide raw images to the DART team
  • generate all the relevant SPICE kernels
  • compute calibrated and derived data and distribute them to the DART team
  • update the LICIACube internal archive with relevant documents
  • design and manage the PDS4 archive to be published by JPL after the end of the mission