Enrico Saggese
Chairman’s welcome
Dear visitor,
Welcome to the website of CIRA, the Italian aeronautical and space research center.
Italy has been in the forefront in these fields since the early 20th century. Wilbur Wright visited Rome in 1909 and trained two pilots in the Flyer, inaugurating the first flying school in Italy. Arturo Crocco and Umberto Nobile were airship pioneers and designers. In 1937 pilot Pezzi set world altitude records wearing what is the world’s first space-type suit.
Luigi Broglio built the world’s first launch site on the Equator and made Italy the third country to orbit its own satellite, after the Soviet Union and United States.
The heritage of these aerospace pioneers and researchers lives on at CIRA, which thanks to world-class facilities continues to keep Italy at the forefront of aerospace research, with a range of collaborations with agencies including NASA and ESA and with industries and bodies of countries ranging from the United States to France, Russia and China – to name but a few.
Whether your interest in CIRA is professional or mere curiosity, our website aims to inform you about what we do, to show you what makes our facilities special or enable you to contact us. In any case we hope to stir your enthusiasm about the aeronautical and space research carried out at CIRA, as well as to show you the impact that our work makes on everyday life.
Chairman of CIRA
Enrico Saggese
