Giuseppe Colombo Centre for Space Geodesy
The Giuseppe Colombo Centre for Space Geodesy is a research centre belonging to the Italian Space Agency and located in Matera, Italy. It is dedicated to the mathematician Giuseppe Colombo and is focused on Earth observation, space robotics and interplanetary missions.
The centre was created in 1983 by CNR, Region Basilicata and NASA and is managed by Telespazio. It was initially focused on Earth observation only. Today it has about 100 employees and is used for research activities and operational services such as data acquisition from a number of European satellites and ground segment of the COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. The centre is also one of the X-band ground stations of the Sentinel constellation of ESA's Copernicus Programme.