PRIMA: A new, competitive small satellite platform

ASI, the Italian Space Agency, is going to finance a developing of a small satellite platforms production line called PRIMA (Piattaforma Riconfigurabi le Italiana Multi-Applicativa) with Alenia Aerospazio partnership as Prime Contractor and sub-contractors preferably chosen within the Italian Space I ndustries. The main objective of the program is to develop a multi-mission, easily adaptable Platform for LEO orbits, allowing rapid, efficient and lo w cost bus for applicative and scientific missions. The Italian national space plan foresees for the enf of 2001 the build up o f the Skymed/Cosmo constellation as applicative Earth observation program p lus a number of small scientific spacecraft with a rate of 2 missions each three years. To fulfil these schedules, the PRIMA platform should complete its development and qualification program in order to be ready for the firs t unit (proto-qualification flight) to interface the first payload (Science or Applicative). The intrinsic modularity of PRIMA should allow it to adapt itself to a larg e variety of missions in LEO orbits with minor modifications. The design wi ll be conducted in order to get an advanced Platform able to meet a large s et of missions, payloads and launcher specifications. The platform will be completed by a ground control centre adapted to the monitoring of PRIMA bas ed satellites. PRIMA thus offers a very attractive alternative to large-sca le missions in terms of costs and completion time. The paper will describe the technical aspects of PRIMA Platform, with parti cular emphasis put onto its flexibility and reconfigurability for different missions. The System and S/S architectures will also be presented and defi ned in view of selected mission cases. The AIV / AIT aspects will be discussed, with a discussion of the applicabi lity of Globalstar(TM) approaches, facility and heritage. Finally, a brief overview of PRIMA first applications /SkyMed/COSMO and Dav id) will be given. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights r eserved.