Page 2 - Italy In Space

ITALY IN SPACE

In December 2014 Italy issued a new stamp to celebrate half a century of successes in space.

With the launch of SAN MARCO in 1964, Italy became the third Nation (after USSR and USA)
to operationally launch its own satellite in space.
Successes continued with SIRIO and the first telecommunication sats.
While Scientific Community focused mainly on small scientific satellites, Italy’s industry gained,
with SPACELAB, a peculiar experience in large projects, specializing in man-rated pressurized
modules. Based on this experience the structures of many modules have been designed and built,
including SPACEHAB, COLOMBUS. MPLMs Leonardo, Raffaello and Donatello, and finally
NODE-2 Harmony, NODE-3 Tranquility and the CUPOLA. Fifty percent of the pressurized
habitable volumes in the ISS has been built in Italy, including ATV and Orbital’s CYGNUS.
The exhibit also covers the small launcher VEGA, which has successfully completed the family of
launchers available at Kourou, and IXV, the experimental European reentry spacecraft.
The exhibit consists of the following sections:

1. San Marco Project (WI and Malindi)
2. ESRO Projects: Salto di Quirra
3. ELDO Projects: Woomera
4. SIRIO Project, and Telecommunication and positioning satellites
5. Space Astronomy, Lunar and Interplanetary Probes
6. Earth Observation
7. Participation in the Shuttle Programme
8. Contribution to the ISS, ATV and CYGNUS
9. Space vehicles
10. Italian Astronauts

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