The Memorandum was signed during the 76th edition of the International Astronautical Congress
The key factor in the development of astrophysics in the last decades was the possibility to broaden the observable band to the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which was previously confined to visible radiation, and detect all the high energy particles coming from celestial objects. This became possible only when we were able to carry telescopes and detectors out of the absorbing screen of the atmosphere. High energy astrophysics, in X and gamma bands, is therefore a relatively young science, born with the conquer of space, and Italians can be regarded among the fathers of this branch of modern astronomy: Bruno Rossi in the United States and Giuseppe Occhialini, known as “Beppo”, in Europe were actually the first to develop observation techniques and experiment in this field.
