Over the last few years, Marotta Ltd. has set up an internal department of design, research and development; this way, we can now provide a complete service to our customers. Currently, the level of know-how has been gained in different areas such as:

• Aerospace (scale model for wind tunnel);
• Earth Observation (optical instruments and telescopes);
• Structures for space applications (payload and boxes).

Marotta Ltd. boasts nearly sixty years of activity in the field and the professionalism that has always shown has enabled it to establish itself both at a national and International level. This has permitted to take part in numerous projects in the aerospace industry, primarily in those commissioned by CIRA, the Italian Centre for Aerospace Research. Currently, Marotta Ltd. is working on the project EXAFLY-INT, a European project coordinated by European Space Agency (ESA), which involves the construction of a non-motorized aircraft to be launched by a launcher along a parabolic trajectory that will possibly reach the hypersonic flight regime at Mach number equal to 7.4.

The project aim is to increase the level of maturity of certain technologies within the high-speed civil aviation. The high-speed air transport has always been hampered by low autonomy and high fuel consumption of the current hypersonic aircraft, on the contrary HAXAFLY-INT will be testing a new aerodynamic configuration with a high volumetric efficiency, whose goal is to exceed those limits. Materials and innovative structures will also be tested to see if they can withstand harsh operating conditions of the hypersonic regime, in terms of both temperature and mechanical stress.

The success of the experiment will possibly bring these technologies to a level of technological maturity (TRL) equal to 6 (System Demonstrated in the relevant environment). As a part of this prestigious project, Marotta Ltd., thanks to the considerable experience gained in the past with similar projects in partnership with CIRA, will be in charge of the design and construction of all facilities handling aircraft and shipping, and also of the construction of the bar torsion component of implementation line of the aileron.

There are many aerospace machining projects that have been handled by Marotta Ltd., but some of these are particularly important and are listed here below:

• Agile. Design and construction of MgSi tool for Agile satellite. The Agile satellite is a collaboration between the ASI (Italian Space Agency), the INAF (National Institute for Astrophysics) and INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. Some Italian universities are also collaborating in this project. The satellite was launched into space on 23 April 2007 and works in collaboration with the observatory FERMI daily scanning the sky. Among the discoveries, Agile is proud of having detected signs of variability in an area called “the Crab Nebula.” The discovery brought to the scientists working on the Agile project an important award prize: the Bruno Rossi Prize of 2012.
• Gohss (Galileo Oh Suppressed Spectograph). Design, construction and assembling of the OH spectrograph suspension located at the National Galileo Telescope. The spectrograph is powered by optical fibers and used for the observation of the brightness of the sky background. It was conceived as a result of a collaborative project between the Astronomical Observatory of Monte Porzio Catone and the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge.
• Hexapod. Realization of the pointing device installed on the outside wall of the international space station named ISS. The International Space Station is located in a low Earth orbit. In charge of managing its movements and researches are five different space agencies: NASA (American), the RKA (Russian), ESA (European), JAXA (Japanese) and CSA (Canadian). It has been inhabited since 2 November 2002 and its crew is being replaced from time to time. It was built in 1998 and is expected to remain in effect until 2024.
• UAVs. Realization for the CIRA of a UAC in 1: 5 scale for a wind tunnel
• USV. From the collaboration with CIRA, the USV came out (acronym standing for unmanned space vehicles), one of the first in its category. It is a remotely piloted vehicle whose flight is remote controlled. Devices of this type are widely used, especially for military but also civilian purposes, for example in the case of fire prevention and fire emergency. the first attempts to build aircraft of this type date back to 1849. That was the year in which the Austrians decided to attack Venice by using balloons that contained explosives. They were then used more effectively during World War I and subsequent conflicts. in case of purely civilian use, USV is used for different purposes: territorial border security, contrasting drug trafficking, monitoring sites of particular historical importance, widening the cables for Internet connections, monitoring industrial systems, remote sensing, aerial photography, environmental and animal monitoring, research and rescue operations.
• VST. Prototypes of mechanical actuators for active deformation of the optics of the Very Large Telescope Suvery. The VST Telescope is the largest telescope in the world. It is located in Chile, in Cerro Paranatal, a mountain of the Andes Cordillera at about 2,600 meters sea-level. Here is also the VLT (Very Large Telescope). The purpose of the VST is to provide all possible information detectable by direct observation of that Universe part visible from the southern hemisphere. VST and VLTs are used in combination. All items marked with the VST are then enlarged by the VLT.
• VIMOS (visible multi object spectogrph). Creation of a tool for observing sky objects by using the spectrum analysis of light. The spectrograph Vimos is installed in Chile, at the VLT. It is used to specifically analyze the images of the Universe by using a range of 1000 nanometers. Through this tool, designers wanted to find out the origin of the Universe, or at least that part of the early Universe, by studying the spectrum analysis of light.
• SMITA. It is a project aimed at monitoring of vehicles that fall into Earth’s atmosphere. It works on the basis of detection of specific changes in the thermal structure UHTC.

Marotta Ltd. has extensive experience in the aerospace manufacturing area in Campania Region, which have led the company to establish itself both at a national and International level.