Antonio joined the Italian team in March 2022 as a Payload Data Ground Segment (PDGS) Subsystems Engineer on the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) EarthCARE mission.
What does your job entail?
I am a PDGS Subsystems Engineer for the Core Processing Facility (CPF) and Browse, Orbit and Attitude and Level 0 Processors (BROAL0PF) for the EarthCARE mission. [EarthCARE is ESA’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite mission, due to be launched in 2023.]
I work at ESA’s Centre for Earth Observation (ESRIN) site, located in Frascati, near Rome in Italy, where I support the ESA and Third Party Missions Ground Segment Section of the EOP (Earth Observation Programmes) Directorate.
I like having the opportunity to contribute (in a measurable way) to the development of a project that will help us to better understand the mechanisms that regulate life on our planet – and to get acknowledged for doing this. I also like the fact that it involves many people from different nationalities and cultures, using top-notch technologies and solutions.
Have you always worked in Italy?
After living in Romania and Germany, I came back to my hometown Bari in Italy. I then moved to Rome to start this new job.
Since the beginning, I have felt able to share and discuss my ideas. Sharing ideas is planting a seed, and this happens only if you are committed, but you also need to trust the people you are surrounded by. We will see in future if the new plants will grow with the right amount of collaboration!
What has been your most memorable career highlight?
If I have to pick only one moment, it would be when I was performing a special operation for the onboard software update for the Galileo constellation in one of my previous roles. We were all sitting in our operational consoles, talking to each other using a strict operational language – it felt as if all the steps that we were executing, in different and remote places on our planet (and above it!), were perfectly coordinated.
After all the preparations and rehearsals I had performed with my colleagues, we really felt like a single unique entity in those seconds during which we lost telemetry after the satellite reboot, waiting for the re-connection to happen!
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I put a lot of effort in everything I do, so I am not sure if it can actually be called ‘spare time’!
Anyway, I am really into climbing, and living in Rome gives me the opportunity to visit a lot of crags nearby or to take flights to remote villages known only to climbing folks. I really like climbing, not only because of the adrenaline rush you experience while you do it, but also because of the opportunity it offers to discover new places – you can visit locations that are not very touristy and where you can really get to know local people. But the most important thing is the climbing community that you can find wherever you go who will always welcome you!