GPS and Galileo Developments on Board the International Space Station With the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed

The Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) is a facility developed by NASA and hosted on board the International Space Station (ISS) on an external truss since 2013.It has the objective of testing navigation and communication experimentations with a Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach, which permits software updates for testing new experimentations.NASA has developed the Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) architecture standard for SDRs used in space and ground-based platforms to provide commonality among radio developments to provide enhanced capability. The hardware is equipped with both L band front-end radios and the NASA space network communicates with it using S-band, Ku-band and Ka-band links.In May 2016 Qascom started GARISS (GPS and Galileo Receiver for the ISS), an activity of experimentation in collaboration with ESA and NASA that has the objective to develop and validate the acquisition and processing of combined GPS and Galileo signals on board the ISS SCaN testbed. This paper has the objective to present the mission, and provide preliminary details about the challenges in the design, development and verification of the waveform that will be installed on equipment with limited resources. GARISS is also the first attempt to develop a waveform for the ISS as part of an international collaboration between US and Europe. Although the final mission objective is to target dual frequency processing, initial operations will foresee a single frequency processing. Initial results and trade-off between the two options, as well as the final decision will be presented and discussed. The limited resources on board the SCaN with respect to the challenging requirements to acquire and track contemporaneously two satellite navigation systems, with different modulations and data structure, led to the need to assess the possibility of aiding from ground through the S-band. This option would allow assistance to the space receiver in order to provide knowledge of GNSS orbits and reduce the processing on board. Trade off and various options for telemetry and uplink data are presented and discussed. Finally, integration and validation of the waveform are one of the major challenges of GARISS: The Experiment Development System (EDS) and the the Ground Integration Unit (GIU) for VV will be used prior to conducting the experiment on the ISS. The EDS can be used in lab environment and allows prototyping and verification activities with the simulator, but does not include all hardware components. The GIU on the other side is the flight model which replicates the flying equipment, but has limited flexibility for testing.As conclusion, the project is now approaching the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) and indeed only preliminary results are available. This paper is an opportunity to present the GARISS mission as part of an International cooperation between ESA, NASA and Qascom. The preliminary results include GPS and Galileo processing from space signals, the challenges and trade off decisions, the high level STRS architecture and foreseen experimentation campaign. Detailed results from the test campaigns are expected in 2017

Biodiversity patterns of dry grasslands in the Central Apennines (Italy) along a precipitation gradient : experiences from the 10th EDGG Field Workshop

The 10th EDGG Field Workshop took place in a sector of the Central Apennine Mountains, Italy, in June 2017. Altogether, 22 researchers from nine European and Asian countries attended this Field Workshop. We sampled plant and insect biodiversity in submontane and lower-montane grasslands along a precipitation gradient, from the L’Aquila valley and the Fucino basin to the “Abruzzo, Lazio & Molise” National Park. The standardized EDGG sampling protocol, involving nested-plot series and additional 10-m2 relevés, was used. In the course of seven days of intensive fieldwork, we sampled 20 biodiversity plots along with 57 additional normal plots (yielding a total dataset of 97 10-m2 plots). Methodological additions tested in this workshop included the assessment of observer-related error (around 12% of the 10-m2 plots was resurveyed by a different team). In all plots, vascular plants, bryophytes and lichens were sampled. At each nested-plot series, also insects (Auchenorrhyncha) were sampled by local specialists, who developed an ad-hoc sampling procedure

The heel-lance procedure in preterm newborn: pain management through non-pharmacological techniques. A review of the literature.

openINTRODUZIONE: La Terapia Intensiva Neonatale (TIN) fornisce impulsi eccessivamente stressanti, nega esperienze gratificanti, causa frequenti interruzioni del sonno e apporta momenti di ricorrente dolore e stress dovuti a procedure diagnostico-terapeutiche. Recenti studi riportano che, tra le procedure dolorose, il prelievo capillare mediante puntura del tallone è la procedura più eseguita nei neonati pretermine ricoverati in TIN. Questo dolore, definito come “dolore procedurale”, viene considerato come una delle principali fonti di stress nel neonato prematuro ricoverato. È di fondamentale importanza che questo dolore venga riconosciuto, prevenuto e trattato affinché non vi siano sequele negative a breve e a lungo termine sullo neurosviluppo del neonato. OBIETTIVO. L’obbiettivo di questo studio è quello di indagare quali sono le tecniche analgesiche non farmacologiche presenti in letteratura per gestire il dolore derivante dalla procedura di prelievo capillare nel neonato prematuro. METODI. È stata redatta una revisione della letteratura mediante la consultazione dei database scientifici Scopus, Pubmed e Cinahl, inserendo un limite temporale di cinque anni. RISULTATI. Sono stati selezionati nove trial clinici randomizzati controllati che rispondevano ai criteri di inclusione ed esclusione. CONCLUSIONI. Dall’analisi comparata dei risultati degli studi inclusi in questa revisione, è emerso che le tecniche analgesiche non farmacologiche efficaci per la gestione del dolore da prelievo capillare nel neonato prematuro sono: la somministrazione di 0,1-0,5 ml di saccarosio orale 24% o di glucosio orale 25%, la somministrazione di latte materno espresso, l’ascolto della voce materna registrata, l’ascolto di rumore bianco, il posizionamento di attenuatori del livello sonoro, il contenimento facilitato, il contatto pelle a pelle, il tocco gentile e il posizionamento del neonato sul petto dell’infermiere durante l’esecuzione della procedura

Development of a Global Navigation Satellite System Receiver for Specific Category Unmanned Aerial Systems Operations

The DEGREE project is focused on the development of a cutting-edge dual-frequency GNSS receiver intended to achieve optimum performance and take advantage of the EGNSS (European Global Navigation Satellite System), which allows the leveraging of several differentiators in order to safely integrate UASs into non-segregated airspace and into the U-Space. In order to meet the requirements for commercial operations purposes, the objective of the DEGREE project is to develop a receiver that could meet the requirements for the high level of robustness required for SAIL IV and beyond, thus unlocking all possible risk levels for operations in the specific category

Assessing the usability of GNSS on the way to the Moon: getting the LuGRE payload ready to fly

The use of in-orbit Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in the Space Service Volume (SSV), beyond GEO altitudes, has become of great interest in view of the future missions to the Moon. Nevertheless, the usability of Earth GNSS at such distances has been proved only up to around 150,000 km away from the Earth’s surface. In July 2020, the NASA-Italian Space Agency (ASI) Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) was selected as the 10th payload of CLPS Task Order 19D. In February 2021, NASA awarded this task order to Firefly Aerospace. Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 (BGM1) will deliver LuGRE and the other CLPS 19D payloads to 18.6° N, 61.8° E in the Moon's Mare Crisium. The goal of the LuGRE project is to demonstrate the use of GNSS-based navigation and timing to the Moon, collecting and processing GNSS measurements along the mission. The payload, developed by Qascom srl, consists of a GNSS receiver specially designed and built for lunar applications, and it is based on their low altitude QN400-SPACE receiver product line. It will receive and process both Global Positioning System (GPS) and Galileo signals in the L1/E1 and L5/E5a bands, the results of which will be transmitted to Earth for further scientific processing. In fact, the Science Definition Team (SDT) of the LuGRE project worked in the past year to define a set of 20 science and engineering investigations to be undertaken by the project. The SDT is currently composed by NASA and ASI scientists, these latter supported by researchers of Politecnico di Torino. These core investigations will be augmented by additional investigations proposed by the scientific community under the auspices of the full LuGRE Science Team, which is planned to be formed in 2023. The LuGRE payload was delivered to Firefly in February 2023 and it will now be integrated on the BGM1 together with the other payloads of the mission. The current and future activities up to the launch of the mission, currently foreseen in 2024, focus on the development of the ground segment both for the payload operation as well as for the science investigations to be performed during and after the mission. The team's final contribution will present the overall LuGRE project, its scientific objectives for the testing of GNSS at the Moon, as well as the development status of the ground processing segment and the simulation results of the most meaningful scientific experimentations