The Space Economy at a Glance 2011
Space applications have become an important part of everyday life. Weather forecasting, air traffic control, global communications and broadcasting, disaster management -- these and many other key activities would be almost unthinkable today without satellite technology. The space industry itself is relatively small compared to other manufacturing sectors, but its technological dynamism and strategic significance mean that it plays an ever more critical role in modern society.
This book assembles information on the space economy from a wide range of official and non-official sources. Together these paint a richly detailed picture of the space industry, its downstream services activities, and its wider economic and social impacts. Who are the main space-faring nations? How large are revenues and how much employment is there in the sector? How much R&D goes on, and where? What is the value of spin-offs from space spending? Answers to these and other questions are provided in this second OECD statistical overview of the emerging space economy.
A dynamic link (StatLink) is provided for graphs, which directs the user to a web page where the corresponding data are available in Excel® format.
Italy
The Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), is headquartered in Rome with three centers in Matera, Trapani Malindi (Kenya), and the ASI Science Data Center (ASDC) in Frascati, near Rome. Italy is the third-largest contributor to the European Space Agency (after France and Germany), and is actively involved in all domains of space applications and space exploration. The Italian Space Agency budget is around EUR 700 million a year. The ten-year strategic plan (2010-20) earmarks EUR 7.2 billion in funding over the period, and should provide approximately the same level of spending annually. The main funding ministries include mainly the Ministry for Instruction, Universities and Research, which allocates EUR 600million per year and the Ministry of Defence for dual missions such as COSMO-SkyMed and Athena-Fidus. In terms of expenditures, as shown in Figure 18.1, Italy’s contribution to ESA represents the first budget line over the next decade, although the strategic plan aims to slightly rebalance expenditures in favour of the national programme and bilateral co-operation, reducing the Italian annual payment to ESA from EUR 400 million to around EUR 385 million (ASI, 2010).