{"id":3888,"date":"2018-02-23T13:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T12:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/srt-the-debut-in-the-deep-space-network-for-sdsa-is-now-very-close\/"},"modified":"2018-02-23T13:20:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T12:20:00","slug":"srt-the-debut-in-the-deep-space-network-for-sdsa-is-now-very-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/srt-the-debut-in-the-deep-space-network-for-sdsa-is-now-very-close\/","title":{"rendered":"SRT: the Debut in the Deep Space Network for SDSA is Now Very Close"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 22, 2018, could be remembered as one of the “historic” days for the Sardinia Radio Telescope,<\/strong> one of the most modern facilities of the National Institute for Astrophysics<\/strong>. For the first time, the president of the Italian Space Agency<\/strong>, Roberto Battiston<\/strong>, visited the large Sardinian antenna in San Basilio<\/strong>, which will soon become fully operational in the “Sardinia Deep Space Antenna<\/strong>” (SDSA<\/strong>) configuration and will be usable in NASA’s Deep Space Network<\/strong> as a communication tool between Earth and the numerous interplanetary probes<\/strong> around the Solar System, as well as for the new and ambitious missions planned for the Moon<\/strong> and Mars<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

In addition to the numerous INAF staff already present at the antenna,<\/strong> led by station manager Andrea Orlati,<\/strong> Emilio Molinari<\/strong>, director of the INAF-Cagliari Astronomical Observatory<\/strong>, and Federica Govoni<\/strong>, a researcher from Cagliari recently appointed head of the national unit coordinating international participation in radio astronomy and all Italian INAF radio telescopes: Noto<\/strong>, Medicina<\/strong>, and SRT<\/strong>, were present to welcome the guests.<\/p>\n

The ASI delegation, in addition to president Battiston<\/strong>, included Anna Sirica<\/strong> (General Director), Enrico Flamini<\/strong> (Head of Solar System Exploration Programs), Antonio Sposito<\/strong> (Head of Advanced Training), and Salvatore Viviano<\/strong> (head of the SDSA project).<\/p>\n

The purpose of the visit was mainly operational. It was necessary to detail the Convention that INAF President Nichi D\u2019Amico<\/strong> (who has already issued a statement on this visit) and his counterpart Roberto Battiston<\/strong> had recently signed for the use of part of the antenna time for space exploration<\/strong> into concrete actions and precise timelines. SRT indeed constitutes a formidable tool for these activities, as demonstrated on September 15, 2017, during the splashdown of the Cassini probe on Saturn (here is Nichi D\u2019Amico’s editorial on that occasion). <\/p>\n

After the presentations, the INAF and ASI delegates moved on to a phase of exchanging information and ideas to best organize and mutually benefit from the grand official inauguration event of the Sardinia Deep Space Antenna configuration<\/strong> planned for this spring.<\/p>\n

Federica Govoni<\/strong> emphasizes the importance of coordination between INAF and ASI at a particular moment in SRT’s life: “The path to achieving this common goal,” says Govoni, “will not be technically simple: the organization times are tight while the scientific recommissioning phase that the Sardinia Radio Telescope is currently undergoing after the active surface enhancement will still require a lot of work from INAF researchers, technologists, and engineers. In fact,” she continues, “after a significant technological upgrade completed at the end of summer 2017, all the new instrumentation of the Sardinia Radio Telescope is in the calibration phase with rigorous scientific tests by the INAF staff to quickly reach the power and precision that make it even more competitive worldwide. Therefore, a meticulous and constant work of negotiation and task distribution between the two major entities will be necessary to be ready and in sync for the “SDSA” configuration inauguration,” concludes Federica Govoni.<\/p>\n

The inauguration is likely to take place in May and will see numerous representatives and technicians from NASA<\/strong> and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/strong> arriving in Sardinia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president of the Italian Space Agency Roberto Battiston visits the Sardinia Radio Telescope, implementing the Convention between INAF and ASI for the use of the antenna in NASA’s Deep Space Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}