Military advisor to the Italian Prime Minister visits ESRIN
Admiral Alessandro Picchio, military advisor to the Italian Prime Minister, visited ESA’s ESRIN establishment today.
The office of the military advisor supports the Prime Minister in dealing with national defence organisations and with issues concerning space politics within the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Dr Volker Liebig, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes and Head of ESRIN, welcomed Admiral Picchio and presented ESA’s programme and activities for Earth observation (EO), with special reference to ESA’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) initiative.
As an example of ESRIN’s expertise in managing payload operations, Admiral Picchio was shown ESRIN’s payload operations control centre for EO missions.
At the end of the visit, he was also given an overview of the Vega programme, the European small launcher, which will be able to place 300-2000 kg satellites into orbit, and whose project team is hosted at ESRIN.
