The Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Center (LBMSC) located near

Malindi Malindi is a town on Malindi Bay at the mouth of the Sabaki River, lying on the Indian Ocean coast of Kenya. It is 120 kilometres northeast of Mombasa. The population of Malindi was 119,859 as of the 2019 census. It is the largest urban centr ...

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

, is an Italian Space Agency (ASI)

Spaceport A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport''—and even more so ''cosmodrome''—has traditionally referred to sites capable of ...

. 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 The Sapienza University of Rome (), formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", abbreviated simply as Sapienza ('Wisdom'), is a Public university, public research university located in Rome, Italy. It was founded in 1303 and is ...

'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

satellite A satellite or an artificial satellite is an object, typically a spacecraft, placed into orbit around a celestial body. They have a variety of uses, including communication relay, weather forecasting, navigation ( GPS), broadcasting, scient ...

s (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 A ground station, Earth station, or Earth terminal is a terrestrial radio station designed for extraplanetary telecommunication with spacecraft (constituting part of the ground segment of the spacecraft system), or reception of radio waves fr ...

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 The littoral zone, also called litoral or nearshore, is the part of a sea, lake, or river that is close to the shore. In coastal ecology, the littoral zone includes the intertidal zone extending from the high water mark (which is rarely in ...

, at , close to the

equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

(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. The Italian space research program began in 1959 with the creation of the CRA (''Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali'') at the University of Rome. Three years later, on 7 September 1962, the university signed a memorandum of understanding with NASA to collaborate on a space research program named ''San Marco'' (St. Mark). The Italian launch team, trained by NASA, was to first launch a rocket from

Wallops Island Wallops Island is a island in Accomack County, Virginia, part of the Virginia Barrier Islands that stretch along the eastern seaboard of the United States. It is just south of Chincoteague Island, a popular tourist destination. Wallops Isla ...

under NASA supervision and first launch successfully took off on 15 December 1964. The San Marco project was focused on the launching of scientific satellites by Scout launch vehicles from a mobile rigid platform located close to the equator. This station, composed of 3 oil platforms and two logistical support boats, was installed off the Kenya coast, close to the town of

. The program schedule included three phases: * Suborbital launches from Wallops Island and the equatorial platform, * Orbital launch of an experimental satellite from Wallops Island, * Orbital launches from the equatorial platform. The San Marco launch platform complex was in use from March 1964 to March 1988, with a total of 27 launches, primarily

sounding rockets A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital spaceflight, sub-orbital flight ...

including the Nike Apache, Nike Tomahawk, Arcas and

Black Brant The brant or brent goose (''Branta bernicla'') is a small goose of the genus ''Branta''. There are three subspecies, all of which winter along temperate-zone sea-coasts and breed on the high-Arctic tundra. The Brent oilfield was named after t ...

launchers. Low payload weight orbital launches were also made, using the solid-propellant

Scout Scout may refer to: Youth movement *Scout (Scouting), a child, usually 10–18 years of age, participating in the worldwide Scouting movement ** Scouts (The Scout Association), section for 10-14 year olds in the United Kingdom ** Scouts BSA, sect ...

rocket (in its B, D and G subvariants). The first satellite specifically for

X-ray astronomy X-ray astronomy is an observational branch of astronomy which deals with the study of X-ray observation and detection from astronomical objects. X-radiation is absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so instruments to detect X-rays must be taken to ...

, Uhuru, was launched from San Marco on a Scout B rocket on 12 December 1970. The

is in use and continues to track ASI, ESA and

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

satellites, and Chinese crewed space missions. 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

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

External links

San Marco platform at Astronautix

The San Marco Project Research Centre

(information in English; dead link, Retrieved 9 October 2008 from

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

, last update in 2006) {{Scout rockets Spaceports Sea launch to orbit Space program of Italy Malindi Transport buildings and structures in Kenya Transport infrastructure completed in 1964 1964 establishments in Kenya Italy–Kenya relations

History

Satellite launches

See also

Notes

References

External links