The Italian Aerospace Research Centre (Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali - CIRA) is a consortium established in July 1984 to promote the growth and success of the aerospace

Aerospace

Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...

 industry in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 (its head-office is in Capua

Capua

Capua is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. Ancient Capua was situated where Santa Maria Capua Vetere is now...

). The majority of CIRA share capital is held by government organizations: the Italian Space Agency

Italian Space Agency

The Italian Space Agency is a government agency established in 1988 to fund, regulate and coordinate space exploration activities in Italy...

 (ASI) and the National Research Council of Italy

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche or National Research Council, is an Italian public organization set up to support scientific and technological research. Its headquarters are in Rome.-History:The institution was founded in 1923...

 (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - CNR).

Spaceplane technology

CIRA is developing spaceplane

Spaceplane

A spaceplane is a vehicle that operates as an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere, as well as a spacecraft when it is in space. It combines features of an aircraft and a spacecraft, which can be thought of as an aircraft that can endure and maneuver in the vacuum of space or likewise a spacecraft that...

 technology using its facilities for numerical simulation and ground tests, and has flown its first transonic

Transonic

Transonic speed is an aeronautics term referring to the condition of flight in which a range of velocities of airflow exist surrounding and flowing past an air vehicle or an airfoil that are concurrently below, at, and above the speed of sound in the range of Mach 0.8 to 1.2, i.e. 600–900 mph...

 flight test of an "flying test-bed" (FTB) vehicle dropped from a high-altitude balloon. CIRA intends to develop FTB vehicles by 2012 that can perform atmospheric reentry

Atmospheric reentry

Atmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...

 from low Earth orbit

Low Earth orbit

A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

, launched using the Vega space launch system. This is consistent with the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) plan of the European Space Agency

European Space Agency

The European Space Agency , established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 18 member states...

.

Since 2005, CIRA is a partner of the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change (CMCC)

Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change

The Euro-Mediterranean Center for Climate Change is a new Italian research centre dedicated to climate and climate related research, including climate variability, its causes and consequences, carried out through numerical models ranging from Global Earth System to Regional models within the...

.