A.S.I. - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - The road to Space goes through Italy.

The Italsat programme was the continuation, always on a national basis, of the SIRIO programme, and was the first programme directly managed by ASI. It included two experimental communication satellites, launched in 1991 and 1996 respectively, both from Kourou (French Guyana).

Its aim, extremely innovative from a technological point of view, was the realisation of a telecommunications satellite with multi-band antennas capable of managing up to 12000 telephone channels simultaneously. During its operational life, ITALSAT was also used for developing pilot projects in Tele-education and medicine. ITALSAT-F1 remained operational until 2001. The second satellite was lunched in 1996, and remained operational until 2002.

The programme was realised 60% by Italian companies, 28% through contracts with European companies, while only 12% of the structure was made with purchases of American technology.