Vittorio Colao, Minister for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition, visited the Matera Space Hub

• The MoU builds on existing cooperation between ispace and Telespazio further expanding the areas of potential cooperation also leveraging on Leonardo space capabilities in robotics and AI applied to space exploration, strengthening Europe’s and Japan roles in the emerging cislunar economy.

• The partnership will advance interoperability of lunar infrastructure and services to support global lunar exploration and explore ispace’s lunar transportation capabilities, with the European Space Agency’s Moonlight programme led by Telespazio, part of Leonardo Group, being the first opportunity to implement it.

Prof. Luciano Lenzini, a pioneer in bringing the Internet to Italy, met with Telespazio engineers and technicians at the Fucino Space Centre, through which the first Internet link between Italy and the United States passed 40 years ago.

Connecting entire villages to the national network through an infrastructure that combines satellite, fiber and wireless connections, in order to bring quality digital services even to the hardest-to-reach areas. This is the goal of the trial carried out in Lombardy, whose preliminary results were presented at the Milan office of the Department for Digital Transformation. Telespazio took part in the initiative by developing a proprietary backhauling solution that aggregates multiple satellite links.

On September 15th 2026, at 03:21 Italian time, the FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C satellites of the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Both travelled aboard the same launcher, Avio's Vega-C, and are now flying in tandem orbit, spaced roughly ten seconds apart, at an altitude of around 800 kilometres.