San Marco platform

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The San Marco Launch Platform, with a Scout rocket on the launchpad

The San Marco Platform (also known as Luigi Broglio Space Centre after its founder Luigi Broglio) is a spaceport developed through a partnership between the Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali at the University of Rome La Sapienza and NASA to serve as a launch pad for Italian spacecraft.

It was a former oil platform, located to the north of Cape Ras Ngomeni on the coastal sublittoral of Kenya, at 2°56′18″S, 40°12′45″E, close to the equator (which is an energetically favourable location for rocket launches). Launches from the platform were controlled from Santa Rita, a second former oil platform located southeast of the San Marco platform.

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 under NASA supervision and first launch successfully took off on 16 December 1964. The San Marco project was focused on the launching of scientific satellites by Scout rockets from a floating^{[dubious – discuss]} mobile station located close to the equator. This station, composed of two oil platforms and two logistical support boats, was installed off the Kenya coast, close to the town of Malindi.

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 was in use from March 1964 to March 1988, with a total of 27 launches, primarily sounding rockets including the Nike Apache, Nike Tomahawk, Arcas and Black Brant launchers. Low payload weight orbital launches were also made, using the solid-propellant Scout rocket (in its B, D and G subvariants). The first satellite specifically for X-ray astronomy, Uhuru, was launched from San Marco on a Scout B rocket on 12 December 1970.

The ground segment is in use and continues to track NASA, ESA and Italian satellites.

The platforms fell into disrepair during the 1990s. However, the Italian Space Agency has conducted a feasibility study to reactivate it for the Russian launcher START-1.