(Finance) – “For me it is a privilege and an honora great joy to be able to be here on board to represent Italy”, said the Colonel of the Air Force Walter Villadei during the connection at the Auditorium of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), a connection organized by ASI and the Air Force with the International Space Station, as part of the Ax-3 mission, dedicated to students and teachers of universities and high schools.
The Italian astronaut underlined that “there is a lot of emotion both from a personal point of view, but also because this flight and this mission are the result of a great team mission. We fly experiments and technologies” that come from different worlds such as the academic, industrial and military for example.
The habitable volume of the International Space Station “sees a 40% contribution made by the Italian industry”, explains Villadei, adding that Italy “is and has always been the protagonist, we are also protagonists with this “Ax-3″ mission, interpreting the a change that is going in the direction of increasingly involving the industrial and private world”.
The Ax-3 mission, which took off on January 18 from Pad L-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space, Floridarepresents an opportunity for the country system to increase scientific, technological and operational skills linked to human activities in space, through the carrying out of experiments in microgravity, promoted by the Ministry of Defense and the Italian Space Agency, in coordination with research centers , universities and industries, to amplify the great national experience in the operational, medical and technological fields applied to space.