2020 was an important year in the conquest of space. Despite Covid, research and missions have not stopped: only in this calendar year have two very important missions left for Mars, one from the United States and one from China (so the two superpowers challenge each other even outside the Earth), which they will give us by 2021 decisive answers on the possibility of "colonizing" the Red Planet. In fact, NASA's Artemis program has the objective of bringing a crew to the lunar surface by 2024. Not only that: the one that has just ended was also the year of Space X, Elon Musk's creature, was the first private company a send humans to the International Space Station, and also the first to be certified to make this route a tourist route not only for astronauts. Finally, 2020 was also marked by the return of man to the moon, this time to look for water. And 2021 will be no different: 6 missions are planned – also for commercial purposes – which will mark a new era of exploration of the planet closest to us, this time with the participation not only of the USA but also of Russia and India.
In this context since Star Wars, Italy has also played and will play an important role in 2021, through Thales Alenia Space, the Italian-French group partly controlled by Leonardo. Meanwhile, it will supply three key components of the lunar space station Gateway (part of NASA's aforementioned Artemis program): I-HAB, ESPRIT and HALO. Then, Thales Alenia is also the only European company involved in the Human Landing System (HLS) of NASA, as part of the Dynetics-led consortium recently selected by the US Space Agency. The company will also contribute to VIPER, NASA's rover designed to search for water at the Moon's south pole.
The company also contributes to the Orion spacecraft and has been selected to build the two modules of the first commercial space station designed by Axiom Space which will be fully operational in 2028 and will also host private tourist trips. A dimension hitherto reserved for the scripts of the most futuristic films and which instead is preparing to become reality in the near future. Finally, in the context of the contracts for the programs awarded by the European Space Agency (ESA), Thales Alenia Space will play a central role in the Mars Sample Return mission (MSR), and will work in team with AVIO for the realization of Space Rider, the European autonomous and reusable space transport system.
However, in addition to "conquering" it, Space must also be observed and studied. In the field of Earth Observation, Thales Alenia Space has been chosen to contribute to five of the six new ESA “Copernicus Expansion” missions and the European Commission.
Finally, counting all the vehicles launched into space in 2020, with Italian-French technology, 10 satellites have ended up in orbit with various purposes: telecommunications, military observation, observation and exploration.
