The AtmoCube project, an educational and scientific satellite atthe University of Trieste

AtmoCube is a nanosatellite belonging to the Cube- Sat class; it is intended to be an innovative and low cost measurement system to study Space Weather effects in the near Earth space environment above 350 km of altitude. This project is being carried out in the framework of a cooperation among the Department of Physics, the Department of Indus- trial Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Trieste, INAF, INFN, and Math- itech. The primary payload consists of a silicon detector capable of monitoring the radiation environment. The main goal, indeed, is to build a map of the radiation flux impinging on the instrument. The secondary payload includes a magnetometer and a GPS: while the magnetometer provides measure- ments of the Earth magnetic field, orbital param- eters obtained from GPS are used to estimate the atmospheric density. Other than the payloads, AtmoCube includes boards dedicated to power generation and manage- ment (triple junctions solar cells and a lithium bat- tery are used), attitude determination and control (by means of a magneto torquer), radio commu- nications, and on-board control and data handling (based on a PIC family microcontroller and PicOs real time operating system). The Ground Station is on its way of completion at INAF (Basovizza observing station); it is ex- pected also to be integrated in the ESA Global Ed- ucation Network for Space Operations (GENSO). This project has a great educational value, being a collaboration between academic departments, re- search institutes and local companies, and having more than 35 students who have spent or are spend- ing their degree work within the team, improving their technical knowledge and capabilities in the de- sign and verification of one or more subsystems.