New chief vows to reinvigorate Italian space activities

“I don’t think the international community realizes how bad it’s been for science in Italy,” says University of Florence astrophysicist Franco Pacini, former president of the International Astronomical Union. “In the last three or four years, there has been a systematic hostility to science. If you add to that the economic crisis, it’s a general scenario which is very difficult.”

The demise of Silvio Berlusconi’s government last year has sparked hopes that science will become a higher priority, although it’s too early to be sure. One bright spot is the appointment of Giovanni (Nanni) Bignami to head the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The high-energy astrophysicist is the first scientist to head the agency. Indeed, says Pacini, who served on the search committee, it was a good sign that all three finalists for the job were scientists. In recent years, he adds, “there has been a poverty of scientific programming [at ASI]. We need people like Nanni who have lots of energy—sometimes he has too much! We need someone who will shake up the system.”

Bignami, who at press time was expected to be installed as president in late April, served as ASI’s director of science from 1997 to 2002. After that, he became director of the Centre d’Étude Spatiale des Rayonnements in Toulouse, France, and also chaired the space science advisory committee of the European Space Agency (ESA). He is on leave from the University of Pavia.

Bignami’s appointment “marks a real change in attitude, which is good for science,” says Luciano Maiani, a particle physicist at the University of Rome I (“La Sapienza”) and former director general of CERN. “First of all, I am sure he will put in shape the collaboration with the European Space Agency, which has been wrongly tuned down in the past years—it’s as if in particle physics Italy would try to become independent of CERN, a real nonsense.” Italy’s previous government played down European collaborations in general, Maiani adds. “I considered it a mistake.”

Shortly after his nomination, Bignami spoke to Physics Today about his plans for ASI.

PT: What is ASI known for?

Bignami: Italy has launched about 20 satellites—many since ASI was formed [in 1988]. The first one was launched in 1964—we were the third nation, after the USSR and the US, to launch a satellite. ASI has accomplished some significant scientific results. The most spectacular was the BeppoSAX mission, which discovered the origin of gamma-ray bursts.

Another achievement was the Lageos [Laser Geodynamics Satellite 2] mission, a collaboration with NASA. It’s a passive satellite, a sphere covered with mirrors, orbiting the Earth at 12 000 kilometers. With a laser beam, you hit it, and the laser beam bounces back, and you measure very accurately the time propagation delay of the signal, out of which you measure all sorts of interesting general relativity effects.

And currently in collaboration with the US [and others], there is the Swift gamma-ray burst mission. A significant part of the payload, namely the x-ray telescopes, is from Italy, supported by ASI. And a significant fraction of the data collection goes through the Italian ground station at Malindi in Kenya.

There you have the past and the present. In the immediate future, there will be the launch of the AGILE mission, which is dedicated to gamma-ray astronomy.

PT: What are your priorities at ASI?

Bignami: On the one hand, it’s inevitably more of the same, in that priorities of space are always science, always applications for the good of citizens. But beyond these generalities, there are some focused activities.

I want to reconsider the position of Italy within ESA. For various reasons, Italy’s presence in ESA has been eroded in the last years. The scientists and Italian industry have not been financed or supported to do what they could for ESA. This doesn’t sound sexy from a journalistic point of view, but it’s of big relevance in the European context.

Within ESA, we now face the fact that easy access to the space station is coming to an end—the shuttle program ends in 2010. So I shall focus on a program with a vision to follow it. This will probably be an exploratory program for the planetary system.

The other all-important point is to reestablish a serious relationship with NASA as a sister or mother agency, and in general with US collaborators. Here, there is a lot of work to be done. One major issue is the AMS [Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer; see the story on page 30]. Italy put about 20% into it. The goal is to discover primordial antimatter, if there is any. And if [AMS] doesn’t go into orbit, it’s of no use. The other collaborations that have to be revived are the planetary exploration program and the astronomy exploration program, in which Italian astronomers have fallen a bit behind.

And it’s equally important to revive a series of small scientific satellites.

PT: Revive?

Bignami: Yes. In the last five years, ASI has not launched any satellites. None. The business of a space agency is to fly satellites. I want to revive the small scientific satellites, in the class of AGILE—that is, missions that have a cost smaller than €100 million [$133 million], and to launch at a rate of maybe one satellite every two years.

PT: Given that NASA has let down its collaborators on the AMS and other projects, and that it is so focused on building a station on the Moon and on manned visits to Mars, would you trust NASA at this point to keep to the collaborations it commits to?

Bignami: Yes. Many people in Europe consider the fact that NASA is not doing many parts of science they used to as freeing a niche of activities. So we can decide for once to take the initiative, and the US community can join in. There is splendid potential for collaborations, in terms of dark matter explorers, in terms of gravitational-wave projects—all things that realistically can hardly be done by NASA alone in the context you mention.

PT: What’s your view of the US’s Moon–Mars vision?

Bignami: I honestly have difficulties understanding the situation. Seen from the outside, it’s confusing because it’s changing so rapidly. I will fly to Washington to get a good feeling.

PT: What about collaborations with other space agencies?

Bignami: With France we now have in mind the first-ever formation flying of two satellites. One satellite will host the optics for x rays, and the other one the focal plane instrumentation. XMM [ X-Ray Multi-Mirror] and Chandra have focal lengths of just a few meters, which is a lot if you need a rigid structure. But if you abandon the idea of a rigid structure and you can keep the two satellites positioned accurately in controlled formation flying, then you can put the focal length at 40 meters, and this allows you to reach much higher energies of x rays. We are just kicking this off. We will possibly launch it five or six years from now.

I’d like to establish similar bilateral arrangements with both Germany and Britain. I’m sure we will also collaborate more and more with the Chinese, who are coming up strong in space. It’s much easier to start collaborations through scientific projects—they’re not political, they’re not commercial, they’re not military. It’s a clean, straightforward interface between scientists.

PT: What is ASI’s budget, and how is it divided?

Bignami: Roughly speaking, ASI’s budget is about €800 million a year; €400 million or so goes to ESA. The rest is for the national effort, which is divided into several branches. Italy has a vigorous launcher development program with ESA around the Vega rocket. There is a big Earth observation program. Then, of course, there is the effort in the space station. In a few months, another Italian astronaut will go to the station.

PT: What do you see as the greatest challenges facing you?

Bignami: Flying missions. We need a vision at ASI, immediately, and we need to start implementing it. We need to redefine Italy’s role in ESA. And, thinking ahead to the next meeting of ESA at the ministerial level, which will be in 2008—coinciding with the 20th anniversary of ASI—I will lobby for Russia to join ESA.