"We will be an inter-ministerial organization and after the final approval of the law, the Italian Space Agency will remain the executive arm of the programs. The plans will have to be built in coordination between the ten ministries that are involved in the space program," Battiston explains in an interview with the Hadaan website
Italian Space Agency (Italian Space Agency (ASI is undergoing a transformation, says the president of the Italian Space Agency, Roberto Battiston, in an interview with the science website.
According to him, until now the space agency was managed exclusively by the Ministry of Research. "After a new law was passed in December, although we still belong to the Ministry of Research, the Ministry will appoint the head of the agency, but we will receive the instructions directly from the government. In addition, a high-level inter-ministerial committee was established that includes ten ministers together with the president of the space agency, and the regional research coordinators that will guide the strategic lines and the directions the agency will take."
At the same time, its budget will be doubled from €800 million to €1.6 billion, half of its budget will be allocated to the European Space Agency, and this rate will be maintained, meaning that the Italian Space Agency will transfer €800 million to the European Space Agency, however, as Battiston explains, Italy is very active within the European Space Agency And so the budget returns to her.
"We will be able to carry out more programs, we will have more resources because we will solve problems and provide solutions to more offices and factors within the government, such as education, climate change, navigation, transportation, handling emergency situations, communication. We cannot say that today the main activity in space is research. True, space research is fantastic, but most of the activity is from an economic point of view. In the future this will be more noticeable - for example, the field of Earth observations is moving from research to applications in areas such as precision agriculture, climate change control, and also because the private market invests in space and they invest because they see market-biased applications. There is a two-way push here, both in terms of generating data and applications that the business market requires and also in terms of the private investors who set a high bar of standards and larger investments to use the space environment for new types of applications."
Referring to the words of the head of the European Space Agency Jan Werner, also at the Ilan Ramon Space Conference, about Europe's commitment to Earth observation due to the US withdrawal from climate research: "I have always believed that cooperation strengthens both sides. It's a shame that the US is changing its strategy in regards to earth observations and climate change research because they have a big part in it. On the other hand, Europe now has an opportunity thanks to the Copernicus program. This will be the best program in the field of earth observations. Observation from space will give us a lot of information about climate change and will help to make decisions to better control the emissions caused by the human race to change the fate of the climate. All this will require a change in the allocation of the resources we use. From the point of view of Earth observation, Europe has a very good future and the fact that the US is changing, I hope temporarily, its opinion, will give an opportunity to Europe, China, India and other countries that are required to answer the issues of climate change."
The Italian Space Agency will participate in the financing of Space Pharma's next satellite
