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