Technical Visits

ALTA, Wednesday the 19th of September
A technical visit will be made to Alta in connection with the Pisa Technical Tour and Visit on the afternoon of Wednesday the 19th of September.  Alta is a small company specialized in advanced spacecraft propulsion technologies and services deriving from activities started at Centrospazio in 1989. Alta's facilites include ten vacuum chambers of different sizes and capabilities, currently used for a variety of R&D activities on electric propulsion devices such as Hall effect thrusters, Ion thrusters, MPD thrusters, and FEEP thrusters, including the 6 m diameter IV10 facility, the largest available facilty in Europe for EP testing.

CIRA Post Conference Tour, Friday the 21st of September
A post conference technical tour to CIRA (Centro Italiano per le Ricerche Aerospaziali) will take place the 21st of September 2007.  CIRA, or the Italian Centre for Aerospace Research is a Consortium formed of the Italian Space Agency  the National Research Council (CNR), Regional government and the main Italian aerospace industries, located in Capua in the South of Italy.  CIRA's facilities include Ground, Flight and Theoretical-Numerical Laboratories. The ground laboratories feature two large plasma wind tunnels, Scirocco and Ghibli, used to perform unique tests for atmospheric re-entry. The largest facility, Scirocco, can operate up to a maximum power level of 70 MW. Other major facilities include a Laboratory for Impact tests on Aerospace Structures (LISA) and a large Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT). The flight laboratories are equipped to test unmanned aerial and space vehicles while the theoretical-numerical laboratories allow theoretical analysis in sectors such as Space Propulsion, Information Technology, Flight System Design and Analysis, Aerodynamics.

The coach for CIRA will depart at 5am from Florence for arrival in Capua, at approximately 11am. Participants will be offered a lunch during the visit. The coach will re-depart from Capua around 5pm for drop off in Florence before midnight. Alternatively, those participating in the visit may decide to remain in the Naples area and then re-depart for home directly from Naples airport, located about 50km away.

The tour will be limited to a maximum of about 50 participants (including accompanying persons) on a first-come-first-served basis. The tour will take place subject to an adequate number of adhesions. Those interested in taking part in the Post Conference tour to CIRA are requested to contact Linda Tallandier within the 31^st of August 2007.

For any additional information about CIRA and its facilities contact Francesco Battista.