ASI and its president Giovanni Fabrizio Bignami were among the protagonists of the IV edition of the Genoa Science Festival, visited this year by more than 250.00 visitors.

ASI introduced the show "La strada che porta allo spazio passa per il nostro paese" prepared for telling the great adventure of space exploration and the role that Italy and ASI have built in the fundamental sector of space exploration.

The exhibition, designed above all for the youngest visitors, who have visited it in large numbers, was arranged around thematic areas, retracing the Italian commitment in space and its future perspectives. It was possible to see mockups of the International Spatial Station as well as the reproductions of the satellites Cosmos-SkyMed and Galileo. The visitors have on purpose been accompanied by fourteen videos to tell the history and the objectives of the different space missions and by a 3D film that tells ASI activities, present and future.

The president of ASI Giovanni Fabrizio Bignami together with the great writer and journalist Sergio Zavoli held the lecture show "From the Mars to Sputnik. Half century in the space." The lecture, introduced by Giusue Boetto Cohen and devoted to the 4 October of 1957, the fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik, allowed to Bignami to recall since then the great progress accomplished in the space field.

Bignami has also recalled the two launches performed by ASI in 2007: "AGILE", a satellite for the observation of the deep space in gamma rays, and Cosmo-SkyMed, a constellation for Earth observation in X band.
During the evening it was possible to see some rare archive footage by Walt Disney in 1956 with the help of Werner Von Braun, the father of the American space program.