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The Euclid space mission, approved by the European Space Agency, is planned to perform an extensive survey over a 6 years period, beginning end of 2020. The satellite will be equipped with two instruments, a visible imager and a near-infrared spectro-photometer (NISP). These instruments will allow to measure the shape and redshift of galaxies over a large fraction of the extragalactic sky in order to study the evolution of cosmic structures, the accelerated expansion of the Universe and the nature of dark matter. This thesis has been carried out in the context of the INFN team participating in Euclid. I have contributed to the development of a software simulating the Euclid Spacecraft commanding and responding towards the NISP Instrument Control Unit. By this simulator the testing and validation of the functionalities of the Control Unit Application Software are made possible. My PhD activity abroad (6 months) was done at the CPPM Lab in Marseille collaborating with the local group in charge of the characterization of NISP infrared detectors. I took part in data acquisition shifts during calibration campaigns and I carried out an analysis on infrared detector dark current's dependence on temperature. By this analysis it was proved that the dark current of infrared detectors is compliant with Euclid requirements and that its behaviour in the range of Euclid operation temperatures is well understood.

In this paper we describe the application software (ASW) of the instrument control unit (ICU) of NISP, the Near-Infrared Spectro-Photometer of the Euclid mission. This software is based on a real-time operating system (RTEMS) and will interface with all the subunits of NISP, as well as the command and data management unit (CDMU) of the spacecraft for telecommand and housekeeping management.