AtmoCube belongs to the class of CubeSat nano-satellites. It represents an innovative and low-cost measurement system to study the near-Earth space environment. This project is carried out by a cooperation between the Departments of Physics and Industrial Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Trieste with the involvement of the Istituto Nazionale di AstroFisica and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. A few local companies are participating in the project allowing a direct contact between research and industrial field.
The main goal is to measure the Earth magnetic field and map the radiation flux. Orbital parameters from a GPS are used to estimate the atmospheric density. An agile mission as AtmoCube can be considered as a precursor of a series of small scientific missions for the analysis of the Earth atmosphere at very low costs and can play a pioneering role in the low-cost probes of the Sun- Atmosphere-Earth system. The project has a strong educational interest: students improve their scientific and technical knowledge by personally designing the satellite sub-systems.
The status of the first AtmoCube satellite is described here with special attention to the lesson learned during the four years of AtmoCube development and possible future AtmoCube-2 missions.
