By Franco MALERBA, former astrnaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) and AAE correspondent.

Twenty-five years ago, the Shuttle Atlantis carried a fascinating experiment: the first flight of the Tethered Satellite. The Tethered Satellite System, based upon a concept developed by Prof. Giuseppe Colombo, was the result of a cooperation between the Italian Space Agency and NASA. The Satellite was designed and manufactured in Italy; it carried a host of experiments proposed by an international group of scientists. Franco Malerba was the scientist-engineer chosen by ASI and NASA to fly on board Atlantis as Payload Specialist of this mission. He was the first Italian in space.

Franco Malerba will recall his TSS1 mission and brainstorm about futures of “Tethers in space”.

Tethers-in-space is a fascinating Space engineering discipline with many potential applications: Tethered satellites may help explore the upper atmosphere or may produce electricity interacting with space plasmas and magnetic fields. Space tethers may enable smart deorbiting maneuvers, may become critical elements of debris capture systems or of artificial gravity for manned missions engaged in long duration interplanetary flights. Science fiction novelists propose cable systems as “space elevators”.