ALTEC, corporate partner of ESA BIC Turin, has announced the purchase of the prestigious building located in Corso Marche 79, Turin, which served as company headquarters since its foundation.
The building has always impressed its guests - be they expert operators in the space sector, visiting students and general visitors in special occasions - with its strong emotional impact due to the captivating layout, the size of its spaces and for its ability to inspire the space theme, thanks to the operational commitment that lives within it, combined with the rich heritage of current and past missions.
ALTEC – which stands for Aerospace Logistics Technology Engineering Company - is a public-private company owned by Thales Alenia Space, one of the most important European space industries, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), at percentages of 63.75% and 36.25%, respectively.
Known as the Italian center of excellence for the provision of engineering and logistics services to support operations and use of the International Space Station and the development and implementation of planetary exploration missions, the ALTEC headquarters are often regarded to as “the Italian Houston”, due to its facilities continuously connected and mirrored to the NASA, ASI and ESA centers. The company has its headquarters in Turin, Italy, and a branch in Cologne, Germany, with operations in ESA and DLR, and liaison offices at NASA.
The large building contains control rooms and service support rooms for space infrastructures, logistics services, engineering, training, operations; Mars terrain demonstrators to test the development of exploration technologies; data storage, processing and distribution services for scientific applications, laboratories, vacuum test chambers, auditoriums, spaces for dissemination, exhibitions and training.
In November 2023, the management of ALTEC provided an insight of the contents of the building purchase operation to the representatives of the two shareholders: the President of the Italian Space Agency, Teodoro Valente, visiting ALTEC for the first time after his appointment, and the CEO of Thales Alenia Space Italia, Massimo Comparini. On the same day, ALTEC management met with the President of the Piedmont Region Alberto Cirio and the mayor of Turin Stefano Lo Russo, presenting them the pillars of the Altec future and of the acquisition of the building in this strategy.
“The Board of Directors of ALTEC has worked very hard over the last period to activate the operation purchase,” commented Fabio Massimo Grimaldi, President of ALTEC. “This headquarters, where ALTEC is based and operates since its foundation, becomes now the property of the Company upon completion of twenty years of activity, almost to symbolically consecrate what is already evident in reality: ALTEC, although operating in a strongly international dimension, also has a vocation to be strongly rooted in the territory, from the European to the national dimension, up to the local one. The operation,” concluded Grimaldi, “is very important to be able to complete the definition and construction of the National Space Center and consolidate our position within the future City of Aerospace”.
“The purchase of the building by ALTEC is a fundamental step towards consolidating the activities that we have ongoing and planned," explained Vincenzo Giorgio, CEO of ALTEC, who added: “It allows us to plan significant investments on the building, an example of which is to realize our ambition to build the new Lunar Center, an asset that will be fundamental in supporting the ambitious Italian roles regarding the reconquest of our natural satellite - the first step on the roadmap that will lead man to Mars - in cooperation with ASI, with which the project is being finalized. The operation of purchase of the building,” concluded Giorgio, “is a follow-up to what has been written for years in our strategic plan, and allows us a development plan that looks brightly to the future for space in Earth orbit activities both institutional and commercial, in orbit and on the lunar surface, as well as Martians, including our own role as operations control center of EXOMARS, the first European Martian rover".
