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Scientific Report 2007-2009
History of Physics and Physics Education
H2. Italy in Space
During the last years I committed myself, together
with my colleague Lucia Orlando, to develop a wideranging
research programme on early Italian space activities,
which led to the publication of a book, Italy in
Space1, in December 2008. This research programme has
been sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA)
and by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), and our book
Italy in Space (with other three volumes on early space
activities in Great Britain, Germany and Belgium) has
been awarded with the Alexandre Koyr 2009 medal, considered
the highest international distinction in history of
science. The period covered in our book, ranging from
1957 to 1975, represents the pioneering phase of both
Italys national space activities and European collaboration
in the European Launcher Development Organization
(ELDO) and The European Space Research Organization
(ESRO).
Two professors of the University of Rome La Sapienza,
the physicist Edoardo Amaldi and the aerospace engineer
Luigi Broglio, were the main protagonists of the
lift-off of Italys space activities. In 1959 Amaldi wrote
a famous paper, Space Research in Europe, which had a
huge impact in Europe and paved the way to the foundation
of ESRO in 1962.
On Amaldis initiative, in 1959 the Commissione per le
Ricerche Spaziali (CRS), chaired by Broglio, was set up
within the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Thanks to
Broglio, who was also Colonel in the Italian Air Force, a
number of sounding rockets with scientific payloads were
launched in 1959, with the cooperation of the Aeronautica
Militare Italiana, from the military base of Salto di
Quirra, in Sardinia. The active collaboration between
scientists and the military brought to the approval, in
1961, of the San Marco Project, a bilateral agreement
between Italy and the United States, to build a sea-borne
launching facility, to be installed near the Equator, facing
the coast of Kenia, and to launch Italian satellites
by means of a US Scout launcher. In 1964 the first Italian
satellite, San Marco 1, was successfully launched by
an all-Italian team. Thus Italy became the third country,
after USSR and the US, to put a national satellite
into orbit. In 1967, the successful launch of San Marco II
satellite definitively qualified the Italian equatorial range
for the launching of small satellites.
In the book we also analysed a an anomaly in the
early development of Italian space activities: contrary
to other European countries, such as France and Great
Britain, where national space activitie and European
collaboration reinforced each other, Broglios space programme
soon vegan to conflict with Italys participation
in ESRO and ELDO. Starting from these premises, our
book sought to clarify the scientific, institutional and political
reasons which prevented Italy from fully exploiting
the San Marco miracle. In the late 60s the San Marco
project entered its decline phase: Broglio did not succeed
in his attempt to transform his Equatorial range into a
European launch base for ESRO scientific satellites; consequently,
between 1970 and 1975, only four American
satellites and one British satellite were launched from the
San Marco base. Moreover, Broglio was unable to break
his gradual isolation at home, because of the lack of any
real opening up to national industries in the concrete accomplishment
of his space programme. The fate of the
San Marco In the mid 1960s Italian industry had been
charged with building the Test Satellite and the apogee
motor for ELDO powerful launcher ELDO-PAS, later
called Europa II. When the ELDO project was eventually
cancelled, the Italian government, , in order to salvage
the work already done by Italian industry decided
to start a national programme for the realization of a
telecommunication satellite called Sirio.This programme
became the main focus of all Italian space efforts during
the 1970s, both in terms of funding and the development
of national aerospace industry. The principal aim
of Sirio was to explore the possibilit of commercially exploiting
a new frequency band, between 12 and 18 GHz.
After a number of delays, Sirio was finally launched in
August 1977, a few months bieore the launch by ESA
of the first European telecommunication satellite. The
successful launch of Sirio marked the first international
success in the space sector for Italian firms such as Selenia,
Aeritalia and Galileo. However, as in the case of the
San Marco project, Italy did not fully exploit the success
of the Sirio ”miracle: it became a sort of missed opportunity
for the development of an Italian R&D capability
in the space telecommunicatio sector.
The San Marco and Siriostories highlight some weak
features of ealry Italian space activities: namely, the
somewhat artisanal approach of the San Marco project
and the difficulties of national industries in exploiting
the market potential f the space sector. Moreover,
the lack of interest in space activitie on the part of
Italian political leaders, and consequently the absence
of a coherent national space policy prevented Italy
from exploiting those activities as a leverfor industrial
innovation and economic development for at least two
decades.
References
1. M. De Maria et al., Italy in Space. In Search of a Strategy,
1957 - 1975, Beauchesne, Paris (2008)
Authors
M. De Maria
Sapienza Università di Roma 173 Dipartimento di Fisica