LICIACube is a part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART, Launched on November 24th 2021.

Its mission was observational analysis of the Didymos asteroid binary system after DART's impact on Dimorphos. It communicates directly with Earth, sending back images of the ejecta and plume of DART's impact as well as having done asteroidal study during its flyby of the Didymos system from a distance of 56.7 km (35.2 mi), 165 seconds after DART's impact.

LICIACube is the first purely Italian autonomous spacecraft in deep space.

OPTEC has designed, manufactured, integrated and tested the OPTICAL Payload of LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid), a Catadioptric camera, a narrow field of view (FoV) of 2.06°, 25 microradian/pixel.