The space sector can become a sector based on large projects and skills of excellence and openness to innovation, said Minister Vittorio Colao recently, with responsibility also for coordinating policies relating to space and aerospace programs. 4.6 billion of Italian investment in the Space sector The Italian budget spent on Space could already count on: approximately 2 billion euros in funding from the three-year plan of the Italian Space Agency and 300 million euros for the share of the Italian participation in the Artemis program with NASA, refinanced in the latest budget law. To this national budget are added the 2.3 billion from the NRP, of which 1.47 billion from the European RRF and 800 million from the complementary fund. Even the latter has already been fully assigned to the various implementing bodies. A total investment of 4.6 billion euros which allows us today to impress a new Italian strategic ambition on space, intervening on 4 macro lines of intervention: investing in secure satellite communications (SatCom), which will allow us to re-position the 'Italy in this area, with a primary role in the European initiatives of GovSatCom and Secure Connectivity; achieve European leadership in the field of Earth Observation, where we plan to invest over 1 billion of the NRP, enabling a whole range of ground services in favor of both institutional demand and the development of a commercial market; increase the investment capacity in the access systems to space stimulated by the strong technological advancement affecting this sector; promote the so-called "Services in orbit", in the supply of modules for the occupation of Leo space and cislunar space, to be able to position ourselves in the best possible way in lunar exploration, also thanks to the strong collaboration with NASA on the Artemis program. The Government considered that the Italian Space Agency (ASI) alone could not manage this amount of work and that, on some projects where European collaboration is of fundamental importance, it was worth trying to engage ESA for implementation. some projects and focus the ASI on some projects of greater strategic and industrial importance. So it was decided to entrust to the European Space Agency, again in collaboration with ASI, the operational development of the programs on launchers - which historically Italy has always carried out in the ESA context - and of the Earth Observation program, where the possibility of using ESA to build the widest European collaboration.
Our Space Agency maintains a central role in Pnrr programs: on Space Factory 4.0, to create intelligent factories aimed at the production of small satellites; in the development of a dual system of Secure Satellite Communications; on the strengthening of the Matera Space Center which extends Italian investments also to the South; on the In-Orbit Economy, to strengthen the national space surveillance capacity and in-orbit servicing. In launchers, we have therefore committed ourselves to the development and in-orbit test of new propulsion technologies (the ground test of the first M10 liquid-propelled methane oxygen engine has recently been successfully completed), and to the development of a new green engine. high thrust for the next generation of launchers.
Source: QualEnergia
