March 2020. In full confinement, Pope Francis addresses all the Catholics of the world from the esplanade of a deserted Saint Peter’s Square. The purpose of his message: “to restore hope” in an uncertain period linked to the coronavirus pandemic.
This prayer, which in 2021 has become a digital book of barely 2 millimeters, will fly this Monday on a miniature satellite of 3 kilos and about thirty centimeters called “Spei Satelles”, or the “satellite of hope” in Latin.
The machine, manufactured by the Turin Polytechnic School, will board a SpaceX rocket that will take off from Vanderberg Air Force Base, California.
525 kilometers above sea level
The message of hope will thus be put into orbit at an altitude of 525 kilometers. The project to send a message from the Pope into space was carried out jointly by the Vatican, the Italian Space Agency and various Italian institutes.
The president of the Italian Space Agency, Giorgio Saccoccia, explained that it is about “reaching from space to the greatest possible number of women and men on our planet in difficulty.”
As Franceinfo recalls, this is not the first time that the sovereign pontiff has spoken in space: Pope Francis had already spoken by videoconference with astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI , did the same during a similar link in 2011.
Source: BFM TV
