To collaborate upon the design, integration, and testing of the CubeSat, the Italian Space Agency selected the aerospace company Argotec, while the LICIACube GS has a complex architecture based on a mission control center in Turin hosted by Argotec and science operation center in Rome.

The scientific team making this cubesat is led by National Institute of Astrophysics INAF (OAR, IAPS, OAA, OAPd, OATs) with the support of IFAC-CNR and Parthenope University of Naples.

The LICIACube team includes the wider Italian scientific community involved in the definition of all the aspects of the mission: trajectory design; mission definition (and real-time orbit determination during operations); impact, plume and imaging simulation, and modelling, in preparation of a suitable framework for the analysis and interpretation of in situ data.

Major technological challenges during the mission (autonomous targeting and imaging of such a small body during a fast flyby with the limited resources of a CubeSat) is affordable thanks to cooperation between the mentioned teams in support of the engineering tasks.

[8] After release, as part of the testing process to calibrate the miniature spacecraft and its cameras, LICIACube captured images of a crescent Earth and the Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters.

[9] It conducted 3 orbital manoeuvrers for its final trajectory, which flew it past Dimorphos about 2 minutes 45 seconds after DART’s impact.