Last November, the final meeting of the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the RAMSESS project was held at CIRA, in the presence of representatives from the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The project, funded by ASI under the ALCOR programme, involves the development of a nanosatellite by a Temporary Consortium of Companies led by CIRA and composed of leading space-sector firms — IMT, Kayser IT, and Due2Lab — as well as prestigious Italian universities, including the University of Naples Federico II and the Politecnico di Milano.
The mission aims to validate in orbit an innovative radiation detector developed by Due2Lab and based on a cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) sensor, capable of performing selective and isotropic dosimetric measurements of charged particles originating from the Van Allen belts, the Sun, and deep space. The device will fly aboard a CubeSat in polar orbit to characterise the radiation environment at high latitudes, a condition that enables data acquisition free from the shielding effects of the atmosphere.
The completion of Phase B marks the consolidation of the satellite’s preliminary design and prepares the project for the subsequent detailed design phase. The activities carried out, including tests conducted last July at CIRA’s Space Qualification Laboratory, confirmed the payload breadboard’s qualification for the space environment, a necessary step to ensure resistance to launch loads and the extreme conditions of the space vacuum.