Alenia Spazio, a Finmeccanica company and a leader in the space sector, is participating again this year at Futurshow with futuristic representations of its programs on the outer limits of the technological frontier.
An exhaustive exhibition space called Earth-Mars will demonstrate how sophisticated space technologies become aids, "tools" for third millennium humans, not only to explore and eventually reach the mythical Red Planet, but also to meet the challenges and emergencies on Earth, a "cradle" that is becoming less welcoming and rather cramped.
Alenia Spazio's tour begins with a 40-metre tunnel containing a synchronized multi-projection system with a 120-square meter screen offering the visitor images on the current status of Earth, with particular attention to ice, oceans, the spread of deserts and deforestation, huge cities and other phenomena caused by the "evolved" humanization of the planet. Almost in contrast to the environmental degeneration caused by man, the atmosphere and catastrophes, there are images of uncontaminated nature, ocean depths and the Earth seen from space.
Part of this scenario are the technological machines, satellites, dedicated to the monitoring and safety of the planet: large projects such as Cosmo SkyMed, the Earth observation system built by the Italian company for the Italian Space Agency (ASI), and Envisat, the environmental monitoring satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) launched in February of this year.
At Futurshow 3002, Alenia Spazio will demonstrate how the utilization of data from Earth observation satellites is a fundamental aid also in studying subsidence and hydro-geological disaster to offer an efficient solution to the control and measurement of the stability of building and in preventing the lowering of the surface or subsurface that can lead to landslides and structural collapse and weakening.
Increasingly, the safety of the planet also concerns transport and telecommunications. Last March 26th, the Council of Ministers of the European Union met in Brussels to start Galileo, the European satellite navigation system for which Alenia Spazio, as part of the multinational company Galileo Industries, is industrial leader. The system, consisting of a constellation of 30 satellites, can provide any means of transport with information on its position, in real time and with a margin of error of a few meters.
It will become a key element for the movement of vehicles, persons and goods. It will also generate considerable benefits industrial repercussions: when it is fully operational, in 2008, Galileo will create an annual turnover of some 10 billion Euro.
In the field of security, the Italian company will also be exhibiting a model of Sicral, the first national system for military telecommunications, built for the armed forces by Alenia Spazio as prime contractor. The system has recently been employed in a number of activities linked to the latest international events and in some humanitarian missions following recently concluded or on-going wars.
In a contemporary perspective, and even more so for the future, the Earth is increasingly becoming a network of global communications, fed also by advanced, multimedia and interactive telecommunications satellites offering innovative services based on the utilization of the broad band.
At Futurshow, Alenia Spazio will be previewing the prototype of a mobile office, called Suited, built as part of a program for the European Commission.
The visit to the broad band continues with the presentation of some new initiatives dedicated to e-learning: remote lessons created in collaboration with the Catholic University of Milan and related to new degree courses in tourism and economics. The Milanese university has already activated more than 20 "virtual auditoriums" across the country, equipped with the necessary multimedia support for diverse university and training courses.
But it is not just the academic world that has chosen to use the innovative digital telecommunications platform developed by Alenia Spazio. ENEL (the national electricity company), too, has used SkyPlexNet to create the first company Intranet (Enel.it), linking 1,200 sites and over 56,000 users.
Broad band not just for work, either, but for entertainment and leisure time. An example is Openet, a company in Matera, that broadcasts music through the SkyPlexNet platform.
If today the most advanced telecommunications technologies are invading everyday life and improving a quality of living, science can be said to have been doing the same for centuries.
Alenia Spazio has taken part in the construction, and is currently developing, highly advanced satellites for national and international missions for science, astronomical observation in different energy bands, and planetary exploration.
Space is in fact the best observation post, and space observatories are the ideal tools to study cosmic objects and phenomena far away from us in time and space, in the areas of the formation and early evolution of our universe.
On behalf of ESA, Alenia Spazio built Integral, Europe's largest scientific satellite, that will be launched in October of this year to study the cosmic sources of Gamma rays.
However, science's search for an answer to the eternal question "Where do we come from?" can also be made by looking for signs more directly, on the bodies and planets in our Solar System.
This is the job of Rosetta, ESA's interplanetary probe built with the contribution of Alenia Spazio that will be launched in 2003 to study comet Wirtanen at very close quarters, making a detailed map and placing a small lander-laboratory on its icy nucleus to take chemical and physical samples.
In the panorama of planetary exploration, there is a closer goal that mankind can aim for and on which, after the conquest of the Moon, attention is being concentrated: the planet Mars.
Alenia Spazio has made a significant and internationally recognized contribution to the technologies of manned space systems and is now a leading company for the development of the International Space Station (ISS), for which it is building over 50% of the elements supporting human presence. The construction and management of the ISS is justified as an essential test bench for the huge technological and industrial challenge of mankind's landing and future "colonization" of Mars - an enterprise that is bound to see Alenia Spazio as one of leading players.
Before landing a man on the Red Planet, however, we have to get to know it better by planning satellite and automatic missions. Alenia Spazio is present in this field, too, and is building Mars Express, the probe that will be launched in 2003 to study the nature of the Martian atmosphere, surface and subsurface, with particular emphasis on the search for water and ice.
And to experience contact with the surface, Alenia Spazio has designed a virtual trip to Mars.
The emotion of landing on the surface of the Red Planet will be recreated at Futurshow with a virtual voyage from Earth to the International Space Station and on to the goal on which the large international space agencies are concentrating their attention.
Ready to set off on this exciting trip, the visitor will make his booking at the AirOne check-in desk and collect his boarding card. The first leg of the voyage will be to the International Space Station. Throughout the journey and, after docking, during the stay on the ISS, visitors will be given information on the astronauts' life and work on board and will be able to look through the porthole of the manned module to observe the blue views of our planet from space.
Leaving the Station, the journey continues to Mars. Along the way, with encounters with meteorites, space probes and the planet Venus, the visitor will learn about some of the characteristics of the Red Planet (climate, gravity, orbit, etc.). The view to be admired is as fascinating as the descent on to the planet, here represented by a large, 8-metre diameter sphere containing a reproduction of a Martian environment characterized by the typical red color of the surface and a simulation of the morphology (Olympus Mons).
Awaiting the traveler (who can dream of being one of the first humans on Mars) at the end of the exhibition is the De Lorean car, designed by Giugiaro, from the film "Back to the Future" as a symbol of another voyage to the future in time and space.
-ends-
Alenia Spazio at Futurshow: Earth-Mars, Or Space Technologies at The Service of Mankind
