Italy at the center of the 70th edition of the International Astronautical Congress IAC 2019 (Washington, 21-25 October).
Italy is at center of the main astronautical event at the international level, the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), held in Washington from 21 to 25 October.
With one of the most visited exhibition spaces of the exhibition, the Italian Trade Agency and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with Italian companies, universities and research centers contributed to cementing Italy’s role and image among the main players in the space sector at the international level.
On October 24, the Italian Ambassador Armando Varricchio visited the exhibition and the Italian stand, accompanied by the President of the Italian Space Agency, Giorgio Saccoccia. Saccoccia highlighted the numerous and continuous successes registered by Italy in a sector whose strategic importance was underlined by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, during his meeting with President Trump on October 16 and his visit to the National Air and Space Museum and reaffirmed by the participants in the Italy-USA Innovation Forum held on October 18 at Stanford in California at the presence of the Head of State.
On October 23, on the margins of the Washington conference, ASI’s President signed with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine a Statement of Intent aimed at further strengthening collaboration between the US and Italy in the field of space exploration for future operations on the moon and beyond. This signature follows a few weeks after the important contract signed at the Italian Embassy by Virgin Galactic and the Italian Air Force for the purchase of a suborbital flight on which Italian aviation personnel and researchers will carry out experiments in micro-gravity conditions.
The IAC week ended today with a conference at the Embassy of Italy, organized by Bocconi University with George Washington Space Policy Institute. The “Interplanetary Transportation, logistics and in situ utilization” conference highlighted the strong connection between the Italian manufacturing sector and the innovative thrust of the American private sector in interplanetary transport.
At the opening of the meeting, attended by President Saccoccia and Deputy Director of the Office of Space and Advanced Technologies at the State Department, David Turner, Ambassador Varricchio underlined how the space sector for Italy and the United States represents the new frontier of the solid collaboration between our countries that unfolds in every field. “An area – said the Ambassador – on which the future of our societies will increasingly depend and in which cooperation between institutions, companies, and research centers, on both sides of the Atlantic and between like-minded countries will be indispensable ”.
On the evening of October 24, Ambassador Varricchio hosted a dinner with IAC participants including Jan Wörner, Director General of the European Space Agency, and Simonetta Di Pippo, Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
