From SIRIO, a Telecommunications Satellite, to a National Space Plan

At the end of the nineteen sixties, a pioneering phase in Italian space activities came to an end and a more articulate future that combined different needs, from science to industry, the began to take root. This was particularly facilitated by a change in the European scene and the different attitude of the United States, which was now showing less availability towards Europe. Strengthening this new direction was not going to be easy. The previous decade had remained linked to the endeavours of San Marco in Kenya, while the decade that followed, that of the nineteen seventies, was undoubtedly remembered for the Sirio telecommunications satellite, around which a new and different phase began.