San Marco programme

The San Marco programme was an Italian and American space effort begun in 1962, when NASA signed an agreement with the Centro Ricerche Aerospaziali at the University of Rome. Its purpose was to place an Italian satellite in orbit and to create an Italian equatorial launch site for the Scout rocket. With permission from Kenya, two modified oil platforms were placed off the Kenyan coast on the equator at Formosa Bay. The Santa Rita platform served as launch control centre and launched sounding rockets, while the San Marco platform was dedicated to Scout launches to orbit. Between 1964 and 1988 the range recorded 27 launches, from Nike Apache sounding rockets to Scout orbital launches carrying the Italian San Marco atmosphere satellites and international payloads such as NASA's Explorer satellites and the British Ariel 5 X-ray observatory. The platforms were not scrapped after 1988 because later European launcher programmes kept raising the possibility of reuse, but by 2003 they were in a very decrepit state.