First suborbital mission for Italy

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“My congratulations to the Italian Air Force and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-National Research Council) crew for concluding Italy’s first suborbital mission. Scientific research activities and tests in microgravity conditions were conducted onboard. Space is a strategic domain where Defence is a protagonist”, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said on the occasion of Italy’s first sub-orbital mission. During this flight, for the first time, tests and research project have been conducted under the direct control of the crew, using both wearable technologies and instrumensts installed on a rack in the spaceship. During the suborbital flight, following the engine shutdown, the AM-CNR crew conducted tests–that would be otherwise difficult to implement- on medicine, advanced materials, fluid physics and physiology in microgravity conditions.

Members of the crew were:

AF Colonel, engineer and cosmonaut Walter Villadei, the mission commander; AF LtCol and aerospace physician Angelo Landolfi; Dr. Pantaleone Carlucci, an engineer and researcher from CNR, in charge of the on-board experiments proposed by CNR.

Suborbital flights have the potential to revolutionize long-distance transportation over much longer stretches of space with a drastic reduction in terms of time.