Page 49 - Italy In Space
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Shuttle Projects
July 31, 1992. Launch of mission STS-46 delivering into space for the first (and only) time EURECA
(EUropean REtrievable CArrier), the first first European reusable satellite, designed and implemented
by Aeritalia (Turin, Italy). Franco Malerba, was acting as Mission Specialist. Commemorative launch
cover cancelled at the Kennedy Space Center with the special pictorial “Shuttle” machine cancel.
February 25, 1996. Second deployment of the Tethered Satellite System, produced under a bilateral
NASA/ASI agreement. As the 1992 mission was only partially successful and NASA recognized that
the malfunction was due to its fault, a second TSS-1R flew again on STS-75, with Mission Specialists
Italian astronauts Umberto Guidoni and Maurizio Cheli. Commemorative cover cancelled, on the day
of the Tethered deployment, in Houston where the Mission Control Center supported the experiment.
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