Alessandro Profumo, Leonardo’s Chief Executive Officer, and Luigi Pasquali, Director of Leonardo’s Space sector and Chief Executive Officer of Telespazio, welcomed the European delegation and Roberto Battiston, President of the Italian Space Agency, also participated in the visit.
The European Comissioner’s visit is a testament to the importance of the Space industrial sector, which is increasingly seen as a key element of the European economy. As well as creating growth and employment, facilities such as the Space Centre in Fucino provide services that benefit millions of European citizens in their daily lives, such as by providing communications and satellite TV, environmental monitoring and support for farming, transportation and emergency response.
Amongst its many roles, Telespazio’s Fucino facility is one of the centres for control and management of the Galileo programme, the European satellite navigation system. Galileo is one of the pillars of the “Space Strategy for Europe”, a European Union policy paper adopted by the European Commission in 2016 and strongly supported by Commissioner Bieńkowska.
“We are honoured to welcome Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska to Telespazio’s Fucino facility, home to some of the world’s most advanced Space technology” said Alessandro Profumo, Chief Executive Officer of Leonardo. “The visit is an honour also for our staff on site, who work tirelessly to provide services to citizens and government customers who rely on the smooth operation of the Galileo programme.”
With 170 antennas across 370,000 square metres, Telespazio’s Space Centre in Fucino is the most important hub worldwide for civil Space services. Active 24 hours a day, every day of the year, the site monitors numerous Italian and international satellites in orbit around the Earth and provide telecommunications, television and multimedia services on a global scale. Fucino also hosts the control centre for the Italian COSMO-SkyMed programme, the world’s first Earth observation satellite constellation for both military and civil use.