Fucino Space Centre and Telespazio Museum

The Fucino Space Centre of Telespazio, a company operating worldwide in the field of satellite solutions and services, has been active since 1963 and is now a centre of excellence for in-orbit satellite control activities, telecommunications, television and multimedia services. Found in the Fucino Plain, a short distance from the town of Ortucchio, it has over 170 antennas outlining the landscape. In 1969, images of the first moon landing were broadcast to Italy and Europe from here. On 30 April 1986, via the American satellite Intelsat V, the Centro Nazionale Universitario di Calcolo Elettronico (CNUCE) in Pisa was connected to Arpanet, the network created to connect university computer centres and terminals, research laboratories and military bodies that would become, over the years, the Internet. In 1968, the Space Centre opened its museum to the public, which houses some of the equipment used in the initial phase of the development of satellite telecommunications: two vans from which the first transmissions between the United States and Italy were made in 1962 with the Relay satellite, the 8-metre diameter antenna used since 1963 for transmission experiments with the Telstar satellite. The same antenna, in 1969, was transported by sea to Kampala for Pope Paul VI's visit to Uganda and ensured the first worldwide television link from Africa.
Another exemplary piece in the museum is the stern of the ship Elettra, the vessel on which Guglielmo Marconi carried out his first short-wave radio experiments in the years between the two world wars.