Turin is experiencing a period of profound transformation after surviving the storms of the auto industry. The city has lost tens of thousands of jobs without finding a new economic-productive identity, but now it is becoming an international aerospace capital, a sector that will employ no fewer than 7,000 people in and around Turin.
The great growth in space exploration software and hardware is fueled by the possibility of obtaining Helium-3 -a non-radioactive mineral that is critical for safe and waste-free second-generation nuclear power. Helium-3 currently costs 17,500 per gram, and 15 kilograms are produced on Earth annually. The Moon is also rich in uranium and titanium. Thanks to NASA’s Artemis project, it will become home to the first permanent human base on another celestial body. A third Artemis mission is planned in 2026, in which astronauts will return to the lunar surface, while the second-scheduled for September 2025-will be with people on board but without a lunar landing.
In 2023, the industry in Canada had sales of nearly $29 billion with 218,000 jobs. Canada is among the world’s top manufacturers for civil aviation engines and flight simulators. Industry exports are worth $19 billion (Source: ICE Toronto). Israel is also very advanced in aerospace. Can Piedmont become the equivalent of these hi-tech nations in Europe?
It is possible, if we look at the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to Altec (AltecSpace.it), which will build a robotic center on Mars, or the excellent relationship with NASA (we will make the pressurized habitation modules for Artemis). In addition, we have the third largest European budget (but we are very close to France’s second largest), the first Mars rover will be made in Italy, and the first European lunar lander will see us in the front row.
One of Turin’s new hi-tech players is engineer Stefano Pescaglia, a 30-year-old entrepreneur from Liguria, who with other partners founded Evolunar (evolunar.com) in Turin, a highly specialized company that employs mostly engineers trained at the Polytechnic.
How was it possible to open such a specialized hi-tech enterprise?
The goal of myself, General and astronaut Roberto Vittori, Professor Paolo Maggiore and Giuseppe Bertolato consisted in the realization of a “hopper”-the LuNaDrone (acronym for Lunar Nano Drone)-capable of exploring the lava tubes of lunar pits (lunar pits), three hundred of which have already been identified, which can lead to caverns located below the surface, which are very interesting both for the geological-mineral aspect and because they would guarantee technicians and scientists the possibility of an underground base, thus climatically optimal (15° the assumed temperature), and safe because free of radiation and micrometeorites. The idea was suggested to us by Roberto Vittori and was the focus of my dissertation and subsequent PhD. We worked a few years on the project. It was not easy to find solutions for Guidance Navigation and Control (GN&C), an engineering challenge because while ground control systems can rely on GPS, we had to develop a completely autonomous system that did not rely on external signals to operate. The LuNaDrone has very precise controlled flight. We are filing four patents, going through all the necessary process.
What are the advantages of the LuNaDrone?
The small mass and footprint serve to make it compatible with even the smallest lunar landers, such as the commercial ones in NASA’s CLPS program. Another advantage is the ability to reuse LuNaDrone in missions with different objectives, not just exploration of perennially shadowed areas (PSRs) and the subsurface. LuNaDrone can collect data where neither wheeled rovers nor surveys by orbiting probes (orbiters) reach. It has a rocket propulsion system to fly in the absence of the atmosphere and has a good range, thanks to small size that, however, does not prevent it from carrying small loads.Our services in brief are:
– Last-mile delivery, i.e., transporting payloads to sites different (and of greater interest to the specific payload) from the one where the lander will be mooring;- Scouting: we explore impervious sites inaccessible to conventional rovers (such as lunar pits), to collect data useful for planning future missions. For example, we check the accessibility conditions of a possible underground cavern;- in-flight identification of minerals to be mined;- path planning support: we can collaborate with other lunar vehicles by guiding them to the most promising sites and thus optimizing the limited time available (many rovers do not survive the lunar night).
When will you be commercially active to carry out missions?
We expect to make the first commercial LuNaDrone by 2027. The race to the Moon is accelerating with the Artemis program and Terrae Novae ESA. Then there are the projects of Japan, India and China and other nations that will collaborate to build the inhabited base: the ESA plans 400 lunar missions by 2032. The use of drones will allow for early detection of sites of greatest interest. In fact, the permanent base has quite a long time horizon, although we already know that it will be located at the South Pole, where good reserves of water and ice have been identified.To date, our LuNaDrone will be operational for a maximum of one lunar day (about 14 Earth days). We are studying more advanced versions, which will allow operation to be extended to more lunar days, and charging stations that will allow the same drone to be reused several times.
What is the aerospace context in Turin?
The Polytechnic is at the forefront of the industry and is collaborating in the construction of the Aerospace City with companies such as Altec and Argotec (argotecgroup.com). Big players such as Leonardo (which has ceded space to build the Technological Pole) and Thales Alenia Space are also present in the city. Many companies that until now worked only in the automotive sector are diversifying, opening up to aerospace production. ESA has an effective program to support the planting of new companies.”
How was it possible to open a research-based company in a nation where the cost of energy and an abnormal bureaucracy negatively impact high-tech startups?
We obtained support from the I3P program of the Polytechnic University of Turin, an industry start-up incubator, which allowed us to start the business with a base of 50,000 euros, and which was also important later in obtaining support from public and private investors after the first start-up phase. We were thus able to develop the lunar drone technology and hire staff.
What will be the next steps?
The first mission to the Moon is planned by 2027 and will involve using a launcher, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and a commercial or institutional lander to reach the lunar surface. The landers of course will not only be used to transport products and vehicles, but also astronauts. In addition to NASA and Space X, there are companies such as Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive machines, and Ispace, companies all born in the United States, Europe, or Japan. This is also why we will expand the network of international collaborators and suppliers. For example, the thrusters are not developed by us, but we have designed the “Propellant Feeding System” that is the set of tanks, regulators and valves that provide the propellant (produced by another company) for the thrusters. Since this system is the most bulky and massive one in the whole drone, designing it “in-house” allows us to optimize and propose it according to the different roles required.
The corporate slogan of the Japanese Ispace is “A world where the Earth and Moon are one ecosystem.” Also, a key word on the Moon is Delivery, as with the couriers who bring Amazon products to our homes. Is the Moon the new Continent to inhabit?
Acceleration became impetuous as we moved from the NASA era to the short time frame of Space X. Technologies and openness to a free market also changed. Payload matters, that is, how much payload mass drones and landers carry and will carry to the surface. With the current version of the LuNaDrone, we can carry about two kilos of payload for up to 10 kilometers. However, from the beginning, the drone was designed to be scalable (in other words, we can increase the amount of propellant) to perform other flight profiles (carry more kilograms of payload or cover greater distances) without having to redesign the drone from scratch each time (and this is what reduces costs).
Material transport can also be avoided by performing on-site analysis…
Of course, all always operating in harsh environments such as lunar pits or PSRs, the always-shadowed areas, which are very cold and probably full of ice. We develop the drone, the customer will tell us what to do: we can pick up the minerals with a mechanical arm and then take the samples to a rover, lander or Space Station through our optimal control system. We can also analyze the soil directly or later. Or analyze with spectrometers the rarefied atmosphere of those environments. Exploration from above undoubtedly has a greater range than rovers.In Italy, have you had difficulties in competing with foreign companies?
A first difficulty is the -inevitable- one of being in a nation-and in a context less rich than the funds that are made available by the U.S. government and investors. Many steps forward have been made with Galaxia, the National Aerospace Hub, created to give a concrete boost to startup development, with an endowment of 30 million euros. The initiative was created under the auspices of CDP Venture Capital through the Technology Transfer fund and the Italia Space Venture fund, which opened in July 2022. Promoters of Galaxia are the Polytechnic University of Turin and La Sapienza University of Rome. In this way we can say that now the financial availability is adequate.
What brand development do you foresee?
First, internationalization, which is indispensable in this sector, first of all in the United States, although Esa and Asi also give us many opportunities. For example, NASA does not fund foreign companies, so if we want to get contracts from them, or join networks of American companies to develop our own projects, an office in the U.S. is certainly necessary.In any case, Ceipiemonte (CEIP, centroestero.org), the first Italian regional body dedicated to the internationalization of Piedmontese companies, will be very useful for us.
Did you attend the recent International Astronautical Congress IAC 2024 (iac2024.org) in Milan, which was attended by more than 400 exhibitors and co-exhibitors, seeing whose names one realizes that every nation, including Singapore and Catalonia, has its own space program?
We were in CEIP’s collective booth and were literally besieged by the public and industry professionals as the Moon was the focus of discussion and business proposals. One of the meetings was about the growing involvement of companies not directly related to aerospace. As is well known, the season that put the first man on the Moon started the current technological revolution. The Moon can be a great factor for new scientific and economic development.
– Also published in Italy by L’Opinione delle LibertÃ
The article Turin aerospace city: Evolunar, the drone that flies into the cavities of the lunar underground comes from TheNewyorker.
