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Everything you need to better explore deep space

We can count on an important amount of flight hours alongside the International Space Station, and also for this reason our payloads are the right mix of advanced technology and attention to all the comfort needs of space explorers.

Thanks to this experience, we have been assigned by the Italian Space Agency the task of supervising all Italian payloads directed to the ISS: thanks not only to experience but also to our expertise in thermal control systems and in the development and integration of both space and terrestrial applications.

ARTE

In 2014, we began the design of ARTE (Advanced Research for passive Thermal Exchange), a tool to improve testing and analysis of heat-pipe performance in microgravity conditions. Here too we worked on the International Space Station.

Heat-pipes enable us to move heat very effectively from a hot to a cold point, exploiting only physical principles such as capillarity and phase change of fluid flow: analysis of their behavior in microgravity allows us to develop optimised systems for space applications.

We submitted the required documentation to NASA’s Safety Panel after 15 months of intensive work, and on April 4, 2016, American astronaut Timothy Kopra successfully conducted a test aboard the ISS.

Our ARTE experiment was also used by Paolo Nespoli during the VITA mission and on this occasion, on September 14, 2017, our Mission Control Centre provided real-time support in connection with the NASA control centre.

ISSPRESSO

The first espresso in space was the result of our collaboration with Lavazza, working together with ASI to bring authentic Italian espresso directly into space aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

And after 18 months of work creating the ISSpresso, Samantha Cristoforetti drank her first coffee in space on May 3, 2015.

Paolo Nespoli also successfully tested ISSpresso on September 30, 2017, during International Coffee Day, for a very relaxing coffee break in space.