The Italian Space Agency (ASI), established in 1988, is a government agency responsible for funding, regulating, and coordinating space exploration activities in Italy. ASI plays a key role in defining national strategies in the space sector, promoting Italian participation in European projects, and fostering international collaborations with entities like NASA and ESA. It oversees the National Aerospace Plan and manages facilities like the Broglio Space Centre. ASI is also involved in Earth observation programs, space propulsion research (leading the VEGA rocket program), and satellite communication developments.
All verified mentions of this organization in source documents.
The three missions that did not take place in 2018—the Arabsat-ISRO Ariane 5, OneWeb’s first Soyuz, and the Italian Space Agency’s Vega launch of Prisma—are on Arianespace’s 2019 manifest.
Thales Alenia Space will leverage its experience with Cosmo-SkyMed, a four-satellite constellation funded by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian Ministry of Defence that launched between 2007 and 2010.
Marco Bussetti removed Roberto Battiston from his position as president of the Italian Space Agency on 2018-11-06.
The European Space Agency agreed to cooperate with the Italian space agency ASI to deploy the asteroid-hunting Fly-Eye telescope to the site of Monte Mufara in Sicily.
Four additional Arianespace customers with Soyuz missions scheduled 2018 or next include OneWeb, OneWeb’s base in the Channel Islands, SES of Luxembourg, the Italian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency.
CONAE will operate Saocom-1A as part of the Argentine-Italian System of Satellites with the Italian Space Agency and will coordinate observations with Italy’s four Cosmo-SkyMed X-band SAR satellites.
Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit announced a set of agreements on 2018-07-06 with Italian companies and the Italian Space Agency that could lead to suborbital and orbital launches from a proposed Italian spaceport.
Virgin Galactic signed a letter of intent with the Italian Space Agency to perform a dedicated SpaceShipTwo research flight from Spaceport America in New Mexico in 2019 that includes training of an Italian payload specialist.
Altec is a joint venture of the Italian Space Agency and Thales Alenia Space that signed a memorandum of understanding with Virgin Galactic in 2016 about performing flights from Italy.
The Italian Space Agency signed a joint declaration with Virgin Galactic about future suborbital research flights using SpaceShipTwo that could be flown from Italy and identified a first research flight from New Mexico scheduled for no earlier than September 2019.