Over three flight days, the aircraft performed a total of 90 parabolas, each providing approximately 22 seconds of microgravity, preceded and followed by 20-second hypergravity phases reaching up to 1.8 g.
These unique flight conditions enabled the team to reproduce key aspects of the environment encountered on small bodies such as rubble-pile asteroids.
The ASTRI experiment focused on the interaction between volcanic material from Mount Etna, used as an asteroid regolith simulant, and a robotic system representative of a lander leg or sampling mechanism, operating inside a vacuum chamber.
The campaign aims to improve the understanding of asteroid surface properties and spacecraft-regolith interactions through the analysis of penetration depth, surface behaviour and mechanical response during contact.
The collected data will support the validation and calibration of numerical models and digital twins for future asteroid exploration missions, contributing to safer and more effective landing and sampling operations on small bodies of the Solar System.
The experimental phase marks an important milestone for the project. Data analysis is currently underway, while future campaigns are already being planned, including new experimental activities focused on lunar-gravity environments.
The campaign was conducted within the framework of the ERC-funded TRACES (Transition in Rubble-pile Asteroid Chaotic Environment and granular Structures) project, led by Prof. Fabio Ferrari and supported by ESA through the Air Zero G programme.
The team would also like to acknowledge Novespace for its operational support and the excellent organisation of the flight campaign.
