The Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Center (LBMSC) located near Malindi, Kenya, is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) Spaceport. It was named after its founder and Italian space pioneer Luigi Broglio. Developed in the 1960s through a partnership between the Sapienza University of Rome's Aerospace Research Centre and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the BSC served as a spaceport for the launch of both Italian and international satellites (1967–1988). The center comprises a main offshore launch site, known as the San Marco platform, as well as two secondary control platforms and a communications ground station on the mainland.

In 2003, a legislative decree handed management of the center to ASI, beginning in 2004, and the name changed from the previous San Marco Equatorial Range. While the ground station is still in use for satellite communications, the BSC is not currently used as a launch site.

History

The San Marco platform was a former oil platform, located to the north of Cape Ras Ngomeni on the coastal sublittoral of Kenya, at , close to the equator (which is an energetically favourable location for launches). Launches from the platform were controlled from the Santa Rita platform, a second former oil platform located southeast of the San Marco platform, and a smaller Santa Rita II housed the facility's radar. A ground station located on the cape forms the center's primary telemetry site.

However, the two platforms fell into disrepair during the 1990s. Since then, ASI has conducted a feasibility study to reactivate it for the Russian launcher START-1, and given significant decreases in the cost of satellite launches in the 2020s may serve the space programs of several African nations as well.

Satellite launches

thumb|[[Ariel 5 launch from San Marco Platform]]

{| class="wikitable sortable"

! Launch Date

! Vehicle

! Payload

! COSPAR ID

! Comments

|-

| 26 April 1967

| Scout B

| San Marco-2

| 1967-038A

| San Marco 1 had previously been launched from Wallops in the United States

|-

| 12 December 1970

| Scout B

| Uhuru (SAS-A)

| 1970-107A

|

|-

| 24 April 1971

| Scout B

| San Marco-3

| 1971-036A

|

|-

| 15 November 1971

| Scout B

| Small Scientific Satellite-A

| 1971-096A

|

|-

| 15 November 1972

| Scout D-1

| SAS-B

| 1972-091A

|

|-

| 18 February 1974

| Scout D-1

| San Marco-4

| 1974-009A

|

|-

| 15 October 1974

| Scout B-1

| Ariel 5

| 1974-077A

| Satellite operations were directed from a control center at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom

|-

| 7 May 1975

| Scout F-1

| SAS-C

| 1975-037A

|

|-

| 25 March 1988

| Scout G-1

| San Marco-D/L

| 1988-026A

|

|}

See also

  • San Marco programme
  • Luigi Broglio
  • Scout
  • Italian Space Agency
  • Sea Launch
  • Kenya Space Agency

Notes

  • a. "Nel Marzo 2004, una Delegazione ASI e una Delegazione Russa sono state in visita al Centro Spaziale Luigi Broglio di Malindi, in Kenya, per verificare le condizioni tecniche di riutilizzo della base di lancio, mediante lanciatori russi, di tipo START-1. Il risultato della visita è stato estremamente positivo e le Parti hanno concordato sulla fattibilità di lancio dalle piattaforme marine."

(In March 2004, a delegation from ASI and a Russian delegation went to visit the Luigi Broglio Space Center in Malindi, Kenya, to verify the technical conditions of re-use of the launch site for use by Russian launchers of the type START-1. The result of the visit has been extremely positive and both parties have agreed on the feasibility of launching from the marine platform.)

References

  • San Marco platform at Astronautix
  • The San Marco Project Research Centre
  • Information on the San Marco platform at Les Fusées en Europe (information in English; dead link, Retrieved 9 October 2008 from Internet Archive, last update in 2006)