On March 6, 2023. The European Space Agency has assigned MAPSAT the development of ASSISTANCE services IN THE DESIGN OF URBAN SPACES, based on Earth Observation data acquired from the new Italian IRIDE satellite constellation designed for Local Public Administration (PAL).
IRIDE is a very challenging program - born on the initiative of the Italian Government and financed thanks to the resources of the PNRR - which will be completed by 2026 under the management of the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with the aim of creating a satellite infrastructure for Earth Observation primarily intended to provide services to the Public Administration.
An important component of the IRIDE program is the development of Earth observation services for the Local Public Administration. In particular, the "Lot 2: "ASSISTANCE IN THE PLANNING OF URBAN SPACES" to Local Public Administrations in Italy (EOS4LPA)", entrusted by the European Space Agency (ESA) to MAPSAT, leader of an industrial team which also includes the Euro.Soft and Ariespace.
It is a team from Campania (all the companies are part of the SAM Consortium) which boasts a unique experience in the use and advanced processing of Earth Observation data, thanks to the participation in numerous and important national and international programs in this particular market sector.
As part of the IRIDE initiative, the EOS4LPA project aims to promote an increase in the use - by local public administrations - of Earth Observation services and information products derived from the ESA and ASI missions and from the future IRIDE constellation.
MAPSAT - and its partners Euro.Soft and Ariespace - thus reach an important milestone, which repays them for the substantial investments made in recent years (together with the SAM consortium) with the aim of creating and consolidating a regional industrial cluster capable of competing everywhere in the market scenario of the c.d. New Space Economy.
“MAPSAT is finally seeing the objectives that it set out to achieve with its Business Plan based on the acquisition of MARSEC - the Mediterranean Agency for Satellite Remote Sensing and Environmental Monitoring - achieved thanks to a forward-looking ownership, constantly striving to invest in the future and aware of the enormous potential that our Team would have been able to develop in this particular and difficult market sector - the Space Economy - which is proving to be one of the most interesting drivers of economic growth in the coming years worldwide” says Roberto Tartaglia Polcini, CEO of MAPSAT. “To this MAPSAT-branded success must be added the very important contributions that our company will provide for the implementation of some strategic Service Value Chains relating to the IRIDE Service Segment tender - through the SAM Consortium, which is part of the winning RTI. And we are only talking about Downstream, i.e. satellite services. But I remember that MAPSAT manages one of the rare Ground Stations in Italy capable of acquiring data transmitted by Earth Observation satellites in very high resolution optics. The news of the closure of the first MAPSAT negotiation with one of the players chosen by ESA to build some satellites for the IRIDE constellation, which will transmit its data to our station in Benevento, comes from these hours. So I can only say thank you to my colleagues, for all the energy and sacrifices spent on this initiative in recent months. They are making it possible to make a dream come true, or rather, an extraordinary and beautiful reality that fills us all with pride and gives us the right motivation to face the new challenges that await us for the near future."