COSMO-SkyMed is an Earth observation programme of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) developed by Alenia Spazio, a Finmeccanica company, as prime contractor.

The system will monitor the entire globe and the Mediterranean area in particular, providing information for a number of applications thanks to the high resolution of the images acquired, the reduced revisit times over the observed sites and the speed with which the data will be made available to the users.

In constructing the COSMO-SkyMed system, Alenia Spazio will coordinate an industrial team made up of several companies including some from the Finmeccanica group, such as Telespazio, responsible for the development of the ground segment and management in orbit, and Galileo Avionica and Laben for the technologically advanced parts of the platform and radar.

The launch of the first satellite, with the construction of the ground segment, is scheduled for June 2005, and the constellation will be completed two years later in 2007.

Alenia Spazio will employ around 500 highly specialised engineers and technicians to build the system over a period of five years, for a total of 3.5 million work/hours.

The main objectives of the system are controlling national territory and monitoring environmental disasters such as floods and landslides; monitoring coastlines, seas and internal waters; agricultural monitoring to check on harvests and manage treatment cycles; cartography using images with a resolution in the order of one metre.

The dual-use (civilian and military) of the system will also allow other more official applications for territorial protection and strategic defence.

COSMO-SkyMed will therefore provide Italy with one of the world's most technologically advanced observation systems to guarantee greater security and an improved standard of living.

COSMO-SkyMed is made up of four satellites and related ground infrastructures. Alenia Spazio will build the four satellites equipped with high-resolution, X-band (9.6 GHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and it will be possible to integrate the system with the optical satellites of the French Pleiades constellation.

All the satellites will be fitted with particularly flexible and innovative data transmission equipment operating in the X-band with a fixed antenna to allow the high-speed (300 Mbps) transmission of the data to the ground.

Furthermore, an on-board recording system will acquire images of areas the satellites pass over even when there is no link to the ground stations.

The ground segment will permit easy reception of the satellite data as well as mission control. It will consist of dedicated infrastructures to manage the constellation (Mission Control Centre and Satellite Control Centres), services for the collection, archiving and distribution to the users of the remote sensing data.

SHARAD SHAllow RADar Sounder
SHARAD is a programme of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for the development of a Mars exploration radar, whose construction has been assigned to Alenia Spazio, a Finmeccanica company as prime contractor.

Under a co-operative agreement between ASI and NASA for the MRO2005 mission, SHARAD will be carried on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe that will be launched in August 2005 to arrive in Martian orbit in March 2006 and begin its scientific operations the following September.

The aim of the mission is to make scientific observations through remote sensing to identify sites for future landers and continue the "Follow the Water" water searching programme.

SHARAD is a totally Italian instrument in both design and development, placing Italian industry in a leading position in Planetary Radar Sounders and making the country's scientific community a European and international reference point for the study of the structure of the Martian subsurface.

This will open the way to Italian participation in future missions to other planets as well as making possible the transfer of the technologies used in this experiment to other areas such as the study of the Earth's environment.

SHARAD is a synthetic aperture radar altimeter whose design is similar to the MARSIS instrument built by Alenia Spazio for ESA's Mars Express mission and can be considered its complement.

Compared to its predecessor, SHARAD will permit a more precise and accurate study of the upper part of the Martian surface, going down to a kilometre to find any reserves of liquid water or ice layers, with a vertical resolution of between 10 and 20 metres -- 10 times higher than MARSIS, and a horizontal resolution of between 200 and 1,000 metres.

Combined analysis of the data from the two radar will therefore increase our knowledge of the Martian subsurface by identifying the processes that have created the current geological structure of the Red Planet.

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