Marked by continuous successes and achievements, these past sixty years are a genuine springboard for the challenges of tomorrow, whether connected with technological development, the pursuit of sustainability or the fast-evolving market.
Founded in Rome in October 1961 by Italcable and STET, Telespazio is today one of the world's leading operators in the field of satellite solutions and services. The company was established just three years after NASA with the aim of bringing Italy into the then very narrow circle of countries capable of availing of satellite telecommunications. Shortly after, in early 1962, construction began on what was to become the world’s most important satellite teleport for civil purposes: the Fucino Space Centre in Abruzzo.
From the first telephone and television links via satellite connecting the two sides of the Atlantic, made possible through the commitment and dedication of a handful of technicians and engineers, to the launch of new activities such as Earth observation and the in-orbit control of satellites; from emergency communications networks to the arrival in Italy of the first Internet signals; from navigation and localisation services to satellite-controlled drone fleets: since 1961, Telespazio's history has been marked by events that have had a profound effect on all our lives
Decade after decade, technological innovation has been the company’s hallmark.
It is now clear that space missions will help to improve our way of living and create a more sustainable future for the coming generations.
Today, the eyes of satellites such as COSMO-SkyMed and the Sentinels of the Copernicus programme can monitor the melting of the ice caps, illegal logging, air pollution in cities, and much more besides. Tomorrow, innovations such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of things, or new satellite constellations - capable of making us communicate even faster, of supporting the movement of people, goods and vehicles, of monitoring the health of our planet - will play an even more important role in terms of sustainability.
And if we look even further into the future, a major change is also due to come from services in support of space exploration. Replicating on the Moon the model that Telespazio has helped to create on Earth in the last 60 years is an essential next step towards building the first human outpost on lunar soil and beyond.
Equally important will be the development and provision of space domain awareness services to protect in-orbit satellites and instrumentation from accidental collisions with growing quantities of space debris.
We are already working on all of this, which is why the 60 years we wish to celebrate are not those just past, but those that await us going forward.
