A remotely controllable thermo-vacuum facility for testing small payloads

A fully equipped thermovacuum facility has been designed and assembled at Sapienza University during the development phase of LARES, a satellite of the Italian Space Agency. After the launch of the satellite in year 2012, the facility has been devoted to testing small payloads and cubesats. An upgrade of the facility allows some operations to be performed remotely. It is planned to complete the automation of the operations so that the majority of the tests could be monitored and controlled from home or during the lectures from the class. The paper will describe the facility, some test campaigns performed recently and the recent advances in remote operations.