Mems mass flow sensors

    10/01/2017 ESA's billion-star surveyor Gaia is in its operational orbit around a gravitationally stable virtual point in space called 'L2', 1.5 million km from Earth. The flow sensor, realized in FBK on a silicon chip, provides the actual mass flow rate detecting the "temperature unbalance" in presence of the gas mass flow.

    ESA GAIA

    • Launched in 19 December 2013, ESA’s Gaia satellite started routine scientific operations on 25 July 2014. As it scans the sky from its location at the L2 Lagrange point, Gaia records the position, brightness, and colours of any object brighter than 20th magnitude that crosses its field of view.

    ESA LISA PATHFINDER

    • The aim of the LISA Pathfinder mission is to demonstrate, in a space environment, that free-falling bodies follow geodesics in spacetime, by more than two orders of magnitude better than any past, present or planned mission.
      Launch: 2 December 2015

    ESA MICROSCOPE (MICRO-Satellite à traînée Compensée pour l’Observation du Principe d’Equivalence)

    • Launch:  April 2016

    EUCLID

    • The construction of ESA’s Euclid space mission to explore the ‘dark Universe’ will be led by Italy’s Thales Alenia Space as prime contractor, beginning the full industrial phase of the project.