Luigi Broglio

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

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 became dean of La Sapienza's school of aeronautical engineering in 1952, the successor to the rocket pioneer Gaetano Arturo Crocco.

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.

When the decision was made in 1993 to downgrade the center in Kenya to a satellite ground station, Broglio withdrew from ASI's board of directors and went into retirement.