Internationally, the ASI provides Italy's delegation to the Council of the European Space Agency and to its subordinate bodies as well as representing the country's interests in foreign collaborations.

[4] Activities started officially in 1988 but the agency drew extensively on the work of earlier national organisations as well as the consolidated experience of the many Italian scientists that had been investigating space and astronautics since the end of the 19th century.

[6] The San Marco project since 1967 was focused on the launching of scientific satellites by Scout rockets from a mobile rigid platform located close to the equator.

Named after Giuseppe “Beppo” Occhialini, an important figure in Italian high-energy physics, the satellite was a mission to study the universe in the X-ray part of the spectrum.

Following on from this ASI developed another high-energy astronomical satellite, AGILE for gamma ray astronomy, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 2007.

ASI is a participant in many of ESA's programmes in the field of Earth Observation such as ERS-1, ERS-2, ENVISAT, the Meteosat series and the Galileo satellite navigation system.

A passive satellite, it is an aluminum plated brass sphere covered with retroreflectors to reflect laser ranging beams emitted from ground stations on Earth.

[14] The Italian Space Agency launched in 2019 the multimission program PLATiNO (mini Piattaforma spaziaLe ad Alta TecNOlogia, High-Technology Mini-Satellite Platform), to develop industrial capability in the small satellites sector.