Luigi Broglio

Luigi Broglio (11 November 1911 – 14 January 2001), was an Italian aerospace engineer, airforce lieutenant colonel and dean of the school of aeronautical engineering at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Known as "the Italian von Braun", he is best known as the architect of the San Marco programme which led Italy to be the third country in the world to build and operate its own satellite.

The facility he conceived, originally the San Marco Equatorial Range, is now named in his honour as well as the asteroid 18542 Broglio.

Born in Mestre, near Venice in 1911, Broglio moved to Rome with family in 1915. Graduating in civil engineering in 1934, he began 3 years of military service as an artillery officer in the army. After his service Broglio applied to the Italian Airforce (Aeronautica Militare Italiana, AMI) becoming First Lieutenant where, using his engineering experience, he was assigned to work at the AMI research centre at Guidonia Montecelio. He would work here on a variety of aerospace projects including jet engines until the Armistice in Italy during World War II in September 1943 when Broglio fled from occupying German forces and joined a partisan group.

After the war he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1950 and became dean of La Sapienza's school of aeronautical engineering in 1952, the successor to the rocket pioneer Gaetano Arturo Crocco. At the school he formed the Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali (CRA), establishing a supersonic wind tunnel as well as Europe's first satellite testing facility at its facilities among other things. In 1956 he was assigned leadership of air-force's ammunition research unit Direzione Generali Armi e Munitioni (DGAM), responsible for the military’s rocket programme, by General Secretary of Aeronautics Mario Pezzi. The unit ran the Salto di Quirra rocket test range on Sardinia and Broglio would be involved in weather experiments using American Nike-Cajun rockets to release sodium clouds for study.

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