Telescopes and heaters on board SpaceX

Two historic orbital launches for the Veneto region's space sector last January featured some of the region's most prestigious technology companies.

The first launch, from the Vandenberg space base in California with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, put into orbit two satellites belonging to different programmes, but united by the use of a sophisticated telescope produced by the Sarcedo (VI) company Officina Stellare: the first, Pathfinder Hawk, was built by the Turin-based company Argotec for the Iride constellation, financed by the PNRR; the second is a satellite by Satellogic, designed for high-resolution earth observation.

The second launch, from NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, was the joint NASA-ASI mission called Blue Ghost Mission 1: heading for the Moon, it represents a first for Europe and aims to test a cutting-edge payload developed by the Veneto-based company Qascom, designed to validate future lunar space navigation services. Both telescopes, as well as Argotec's satellite, integrate heating elements developed by the Zoppas Industries group, which are essential to ensure thermal equilibrium in extreme space conditions.

"The success of the launch is for Qascom the start of experimentation that as a first goal will try to obtain the 'Guiness World Record' for the calculation of the GPS and Galileo position furthest from the earth," said Oscar and Alessandro Pozzobon, Qascom's directors. "Subsequently, the goal is the lunar landing and experimentation from the lunar surface. This is a very important step that contributes to the future development of navigation systems in space'.

And Giovanni Dal Lago, Executive Chairman of Officina Stellare, emphasises that 'the two high-resolution Earth observation telescopes, entirely manufactured in our headquarters in Vicenza, Italy, were designed with different characteristics to meet distinct space programmes: one institutional and the other commercial. Both, however, share the exceptionality of having been launched on the same flight as SpaceX's Falcon 9, making this event a source of great pride for us'.