V. Iafolla

• Dr.
• Principal Investigator at National Institute of Astrophysics

The Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) is a three axis mass-spring accelerometer, one of the payloads of the BepiColombo joint space mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). At launch in October 2018, BepiColombo started its seven-year cruise as a stack of three different modules, overall na...

Sea wave monitoring is key in many applications in oceanography such as the validation of weather and wave models. Conventional in situ solutions are based on moored buoys whose measurements are often recognized as a standard. However, being exposed to a harsh environment, they are not reliable, need frequent maintenance, and the datasets feature m...

BepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, to perform a comprehensive exploration of Mercury. Launched on $20^{\mathrm{th}}$ 20 th October 2018 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, the spacecraft is now en route to Mercury. Two orbiters have been sent...

ISA is a three-axis accelerometer embarked on-board BepiColombo, a joint ESA/JAXA space mission launched on the 19th of October 2018 at 22.45 (local time) and devoted to put two spacecraft (MPO and MMO) around Mercury (2024), for a deeper investigation of the planet and its environment. ISA aims at measuring, directly and not by modelling, first ti...

ISA (Italian Spring Accelerometer) is a high sensitivity accelerometer flying, as scientific payload, on-board one of the two spacecraft (the Mercury Planetary Orbiter) of BepiColombo, the first ESA mission to Mercury. The first commissioning phase (performed in the period November 2018 - August 2019) allowed to verify the functionality of the inst...

The aim of the paper is to present and discuss the results of an ambient vibration monitoring campaign conducted in the old town of Lucca, over the period 2015–2018. Despite the low level of the ambient vibrations in the historic center, using high-sensitivity instrumentation allowed the authors to measure and study the dynamic behavior of two medi...

The paper presents the results of an ambient vibration monitoring campaign conducted on the so-called “Clock Tower” (Torre delle Ore), one of the best known and most visited monuments in the historic centre of Lucca. The vibrations of the tower were continuously monitored from November 2017 to March 2018 using high-sensitivity instrumentation. In p...

The paper presents the results of an ambient vibration monitoring campaign conducted on so-called Clock Tower (Torre delle Ore), one the best known and most visited monuments in the historic centre of Lucca. The vibrations of the tower were continuously monitored from November 2017 to March 2018 using high-sensitivity instrumentation. In particular...

In the framework of the FP7 program FISICA (Far Infrared Space Interferometer Critical Assessment), we are developing a cubesat platform which will be used for the validation in space of two technological bricks relevant for FIRI. The first brick is a high-precision accelerometer which could be used in a future space mission as fundamental element...

In this chapter, the historical evolution of the concept of gravitation, with its connections to the observations of natural phenomena and to the related experiments, is presented. It starts with a brief description of the first stage of the experiments and continues giving details on the work related to it. The smallness of the gravitational effec...

Il sistema OS-IS® è stato sviluppato nell’ambito del progetto europeo “Vento, Porti e Mare” (VPM) per il monitoraggio e la previsione del moto ondoso nell’Alto Tirreno; il progetto è finalizzato al miglioramento della sicurezza della navigazione e alla mitigazione del rischio di incidenti nelle aree portuali. La peculiarità di questo sistema è nell...

The models developed so far to account for the Non-Gravitational Perturbations (NGP) acting on the satellites of the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) constitute the present limit for further improvements in the Precise Orbit Determination (POD) of these satellites. These models are mainly based on the estimate of empirical parameters (wit...

The Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) is an high- sensitivity instrument designed to measure very small accelera- tions. As such, it is suitable for a number of applications, notably the measurement of non-gravitational accelerations acting on the surface of a spacecraft. ISA has been selected to fly on board the forthcoming BepiColombo mission for...

In this paper, we present the results from a ground-based testbed of a sparse-aperture Fizeau interferometer designed for a CubeSat demonstrator, named HyperCube. It consists of a miniaturized version of a Hypertelescope, with a configuration that mimics that one of a space interferometer having a highly diluted collecting area. Overall, the projec...

BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission devoted to study the planet Mercury through two orbiters (MPO and MMO) to be launched in 2017. Among the main objectives, the European MPO aims at measuring the gravitational field of Mercury with unprecedented accuracy, through a careful reconstruction of the spacecraft orbit. The use of a very high sensitiv...

The key role of the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) in the radio science measurements of the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury is to remove, a posteriori, the non-gravitational accelerations acting on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) due to the very strong radiation environment around Mercury. This paper is devoted to describe the on-ground...

We present here the concept for a new experimental test of the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) carried out in the gravity field of the Sun. In this experiment, two test masses of different materials are the central elements of a differential accelerometer with zero baseline. The differential accelerometer is placed on a pendulum, in such a way as...

The European project “Wind, Ports, and Sea” (VPM), funded by the European Cross-border Programme “Italy-France Maritime 2007-2013”, aims to improve the safety conditions and to reduce the hazards by the development of a coupled monitoring and forecast system of the sea-state outside the main harbors of the Northern Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Seas. In...

Important processes that affect the Earth, for example climate change and geohazards, are driven by phenomena that take place in the oceans. To better understand and mitigate the effects of these processes, an important international effort is taking place to deploy permanent and remotely controlled seafloor and water-column observatory systems. In...

The progress and results of the ongoing FP7-FISICA programme to re-asses the scientific goals of a Far-Infrared Space Interfereometer and push the development of some of its key technology elements are reported.

Gravity time sequences collected at Etna volcano by continuously recording spring-based relative gravimeters showed significant variations in temporal correspondence with paroxysmal eruptions. Since the observed gravity variations can only be partially related to subsurface mass redistribution phenomena, we investigated the instrumental effects due...

The European project “Wind, Ports, and Sea”, funded by the European Cross-border Programme “Italy–France Maritime 2007-2013”, aims to improve the safety conditions and to reduce the haz- * E-mail: lorenzo.iafolla@agi-tech.com 692 ASITA 2014 ards by monitoring and forecasting the sea-state outside the main ports of the Northern Tyrrhenian and Liguri...

Fundamental Physics, Accelerometer,

FISICA (Far Infrared Space Interferometer Critical Assessment) is an FP7 program of the European community that aims to bring together the leading international experts on FIR (Far InfraRed) space instrumentation, in the effort to identify the scientific questions connected to high spatial resolution observations in the FIR and to translate these q...

A cryogenic differential accelerometer has been developed to test the weak equivalence principle to a few parts in 10(15) within the framework of the general relativity accuracy test in an Einstein elevator experiment. The prototype sensor was designed to identify, address, and solve the major issues associated with various aspects of the experimen...

The Solar System environment is a natural arena for performing fundamental physics experiments, in particular related to gravitation. Since decades the deep-space missions (such as the Pioneers, the Voyagers, Cassini) host instrumental packages to perform dedicated experiments on gravitation, gradually extending our knowledge of gravitational pheno...

The gravimetric prospections are usually performed by using relative instrumentations, having suitable features to work outside a lab or on a vehicle/ship. Nevertheless their relative measures have to be referred to an absolute measure which represents the reference point. These last measurements are not easy to perform due to the difficulty to ope...

Over the last three years, the eruptive activity at Mt. Etna volcano (Italy) has been dominated by frequent, paroxysmal episodes of spectacular lava fountains, associated with fast-moving lava flows, and tephra columns, occurring from the South East Crater in the summit area. To study these short-lived but intense volcanic phenomena, that involve g...

BepiColombo, the forthcoming ESA (cornerstone) mission to Mercury [1,10], will include a comprehensive set of experiments  denominated Radio Science Experiments (RSE)  in order to measure the gravitational field of the planet and its rotation [8] and to perform precise tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity versus other metric theories...

The forthcoming BepiColombo mission for the exploration of the planet Mercury will include a comprehensive set of experiments --- the so--called Radio Science Experiments (RSE) --- in order to measure the gravitational field of the planet, its rotation, and to perform precise tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Fundamental piece of RS...

TEPEE/GReAT is a proposed experiment aimed at testing the Equivalence Principle (EP) with accuracy equal to 5 parts in (10^{15}) by means of a differential acceleration detector free falling inside a co--moving, cryogenic, evacuated capsule released from a stratospheric balloon. The detector is spun about a horizontal axis during the fall to modula...

The recent years have seen again the Moon as a target for exploration activities. The reasons for this new wave are manifold, from the knowledge of formation and evolution of the Moon towards its current state to the possibility of building a human settlement on its surface, with all the related issues of environment characterization, safety, resou...

The design, realization and operation of the BepiColombo ISA accelerometer is a complex task which continuously requires evaluations, assessment of new ideas and validation of procedures. With the project advancement, it has become clear the need for a numerical simulator of the instrument. This should simulate in fact not only the instrument itsel...

Improving the level of accuracy in testing the principle of equivalence (PE) requires reliably extracting a very small signal from an instrument's intrinsic noise and the noise associated with the instrument's motion. In fact, the spin velocity required to modulate a PE-violating signal produces a relatively high level of motion-related noise and m...

In recent years the Moon has become again a target for exploration activities, as shown by many missions, performed, ongoing or foreseen. The reasons for this new wave are manifold. The knowledge of formation and evolution of the Moon to its current state is important in order to trace the overall history of Solar System. An effective driving fact...

The key role of the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) in the radio science measurements of the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury is to remove, aposteriori, the non-gravitational accelerations acting on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) due to the very strong radiation environment around Mercury. This presentation is devoted to describe the main...

The Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) has been selected by ESA to fly onboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the BepiColombo space mission. Mercury's exploration represents one of the most important challenges of modern planetary sciences and the mission aims to reach a much better understanding of the internal structure and composition of...

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury [1, 10] of the European Space Agency (ESA) aims to perform a set of experiments, the so called Radio Science Experiments (RSE), that will be devoted to the study of the gravity field and rotational state of Mercury [8] as well as to verify the theory of general relativity to an unprecedented level of accuracy [9]....

We presents the results of an activity concerning the test of the Einstein Weak Equivalence Principle with an accuracy of about 5 × 10−15. The experiment will be performed in an “Einstein elevator” using a differential accelerometer with a final sensitivity of about 10−14 g⊕/Hz1/2. The differential accelerometer is spun about an horizontal axis at...

The Mercury Planetary Orbiter will be a three-axis stabilized spacecraft and nadir pointing to Mercury center-of-mass. The pointing accuracy, needed for the very ambitious goals of the ESA space mission to Mercury denominated BepiColombo, is reached thanks to the onboard reaction wheels, and it is also required during the unobserved arcs. The unavo...

The Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) will give a fundamental contribution to the Radio Science Experiments of BepiColombo mission, enabling substantial improvement of the knowledge of Mercury's orbit and rotation, and of the relativistic dynamics in the solar system. ISA is a three-axis accelerometer devoted to the measurement of the non-gravitat...

The opening of the XXI century sees a new wave in lunar exploration, with a significant number of missions, both ongoing and in preparation. The exploration of our natural satellite is indeed important to gain understanding on the formation of Solar System and to create the basis for a future human colonization. On this respect, the study of the Mo...

GReAT (General Relativity Accuracy Test) is a free fall experiment from stratospheric balloon altitude to test the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) with an accuracy of (5 \cdot 10^{-15}). The key components of the experiments are a very high accuracy (sensitivity close to (10^{-14}) g/(\sqrt{Hz}) in a 25-s integration time) differential acceleratio...

The Solar System is a complex laboratory for testing gravitational physics. Indeed, its scale and hierarchical structure make possible a wide range of tests for gravitational theories, studying the motion of both natural and artificial objects. The usual methodology makes use of tracking information related to the bodies, fitted by a suitable dynam...

The SN-1 multiparameter seafloor cabled observatory has been operating from 2005 in the western Ionian Sea, about 25 km off shore Eastern Sicily, at about 2000 m of depth. The cabled operation was preceded by a stand-alone operation experiment in 2002-2003. Accordingly, a significant time extension of geophysical time series recordings at seafloor...

In recent years the Moon has become again a target for exploration activities, as shown by many performed, ongoing or foreseen missions. The reason for this new wave are manifold. The knowledge of formation and evolution of the Moon to current state is important in order to trace the overall history of Solar System. An effective driving factor is t...

The MPO will be a three-axis stabilized spacecraft and nadir pointing to Mercury center-of-mass. Such a pointing, needed for the very ambitious goals of the ESA space mission to Mercury denominated BepiColombo, is reached thanks to the onboard reaction wheels, and it is also required during the unobserved (from Earth) arcs. The unavoidable manoeuvr...

ISA (Italian Spring Accelerometer) is a very broad-band high-sensitivity accelerometer, result of a long activity devoted to the development of instruments for space use (room temperature gradiometers ad accelerometers). It can equally well be used for geophysical studies. It is the underlying component of a wide variety of instruments, as a high-s...

The development of BepiColombo mission is proceeding, in view of the launch, foreseen for 2014. This mission will perform a thorough study of the planet Mercury and its environment. An important set of scientific objectives is constituted by the so-called Radio Science Experiments (RSE), which will study the gravitational field and rotation of the...

The Radio Science Experiments of the BepiColombo mission will enable substantial improvement of the knowledge of Mercury's orbit and rotation, and the relativistic dynamics in the solar system. A fundamental support to the spacecraft tracking data will be given by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA). This is a three-axis accelerometer devoted to...

The Solar System is a complex laboratory for testing gravitational physics. Indeed, its scale and hierarchical structure make possible a wide range of tests for gravitational theories, studying the motion of both natural and artificial objects and comparing the predictions of different theories with experimental data. Future exploration scenarios s...

TEPEE/GReAT is an ongoing experiment aimed at testing the Equivalence Principle (EP) with accuracy equal to 5 parts in 101 5 by means of a differential acceleration detector free falling inside a co-moving, cryogenic, evacuated capsule released from a stratospheric balloon. The detector is spun about a horizontal axis during the fall to modulate a...

The recent years have seen again the Moon as a target for exploration activities. The reasons for this new wave are manifold, from the knowledge of formation and evolution of the Moon towards its current state to the possibility of building a human settlement on its surface, with all the related issues of environment characterization, safety, resou...

The Experimental Gravitation Group of Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI-INAF) has recently completed the development of a drop tower in its laboratories. This new facility is used in the context of the wide range of activities of the Group, in particular for testing high-sensitivity accelerometers and gradiometers. These instrum...

To be launched in 2014, ESA mission BepiColombo will perform a thorough study of the planet Mercury and its environment. Among the wide range of its scientific objectives, an important set is constituted by the so-called Radio Science Experiments (RSE), which will study the gravitational field and rotation of the planet, and will perform very preci...

A new concept gravity meter with sensitivity close to Hz ms / 10 2 8 ? ? in the range of 10 -5 ?1Hz intended for observation of the vertical component of the Earth gravity and teleseismic waves was implemented at the Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), CNR and successfully operated during the GEOSTAR-2 mission. The gravimeter ha...

The ESA BepiColombo mission, for the exploration of planet Mercury, has been rescheduled for launch in 2014 with a redesigned two-satellite configuration. Among the main scientific objectives of this mission are the gravimetry and rotation of Mercury and tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity, to which the ISA (Italian Spring Acceleromete...

Following an agreement taken in the summer of 2008, the ILN (International Lunar Network) is going to be an important step in the exploration of our natural satellite. Each node of this network will include instrumentation to investigate on the Moon interior structure and composition, and possibly fundamental physics. Among the main instruments con...

“Galileo Galilei” (GG) is a small satellite designed to fly in low Earth orbit with the goal of testing the Equivalence Principle—which is at the basis of the General Theory of Relativity—to 1 part in 1017. If successful, it would improve current laboratory results by 4 orders of magnitude. A confirmation would strongly constrain theories; proof of...

"Galileo Galilei" (GG) is a small satellite designed to fly in low Eath orbit with the goal of testing the Equivalence Principle - which is at teh basis of the General Theory of Relativity - to 1 part in 10^17. If successfull, it would improve current laboratory results by 4 order of magnitudes. A confirmation would strongly constrain theories; pro...

Progresses in the development of a free-fall test of the Principle of Equivalence (PE) are reported with particular emphasis on the work related to development of the differential accelerometer prototype and its laboratory tests. The PE experiment is planned to be carried out in free-fall conditions, inside a capsule (Einstein elevator) released fr...