COSMO-Skymed strategies and actions to successfully increase the life of both ground segment and space segment

COSMO-SkyMed is a constellation of four radar satellites for Earth Observation (EO), funded by the Italian Ministry of Research and Italian Ministry of Defence (I-MoD) and conducted by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in conjunction with I-MoD. It has been entirely designed, developed and produced in Italy. Thanks to the realization of this system, one of the most challenging space-borne imaging radar system designed and built in Europe, Italy is playing a key role in the international context. This dual-use space system, capable of the highest operational capability in the world (mainly thanks to its four satellites, high revisit and response time, high resolution), was conceived to serve a wide EO community, proving high-definition data in all-time (day/night) and all-weather conditions to institutions, defense organizations and private companies. Currently, all the four satellites have completed their nominal operational life (5.25 years), but the constellation is still fully operative, provides data with the required image quality and today the expected residual lifetime is of more than one year also for the older satellite (more years for the most recent ones). This paper is focused on all the strategies and measures applied to increase this operational lifetime.