The EXCITE mission has officially kicked off, marking the start of an EXCITing new CubeSat mission! For this complex activity, all three engineering departments of UniPi – DICI, DII and DESTEC – joined forces under the coordination of the Space Systems Laboratory. Working under an ASI contract in the frame of the ALCOR programme, the EXCITE team also includes four SMEs located in Tuscany: Aerospazio Tecnologie, CRM Compositi, IngeniArs, MBI.
EXCITE is built to bring innovation into orbit through the in-orbit demonstration of five technologies, all equally central to the mission: a green monopropellant thruster based on hydrogen peroxide, a pulsed plasma thruster, a reconfigurable S-band antenna, an onboard demodulation concept for IoT communications, and pulsating heat pipes for advanced thermal control.
The mission is currently baselined on a 12U platform. The reference profile targets a one-year operational campaign in a 500–550 km sun-synchronous orbit, with operations coordinated from Pisa.
We’re genuinely happy to see EXCITE moving from planning to action. Next steps will focus on consolidating the design, defining interfaces, and turning the mission concept into a spacecraft ready for integration and flight.