Earth Next – Preliminary Design Review (PDR)

The EarthNext mission project, funded by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana in the framework of the ALCOR program, has successfully passed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR), thus marking the conclusion of the preliminary design phase.

The PDR close out meeting was held yesterday at Officina Stellare S.p.A headquarters at the presence of the ASI and all Officina Stellare S.p.A project partners AIKO – Infinite ways to autonomy, Planetek Italia, T4i Technology for Propulsion and Innovation, TSD-Space and Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UniNa) / University of Naples Federico II.

“An exciting first milestone for the EarthNext project- comment Annalisa Capanni and Lorenzo Iannascoli, OS’ Earthnext Lead team – the challenges that a VLEO mission entails have been addressed by the industrial and university team with the distinctive “out-of-the-box” mindset of CubeSat projects. Five breadboarding models of mission-enabling technologies were successfully designed, produced and tested, in order to mitigate risks and facilitate the developments expected in the next phases of the project. Another exciting phase is ahead of us and we will approach it with the same attitude, enthusiasm and commitment we all had so far”.

EarthNext will operate a 16U CubeSat for Earth Observation in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) using an extremely compact multispectral optical payload for imaging applications.