The SAX Satellite is to be launched at the beginning of 1996, following many years of development.
The SAX Program overall organization, given in Figure 1 shows, besides the two associated Procuring Agencies, the three main Contractors respectively for the Space Segment (i.e. the Satellite), the Ground Segment and the Launch Vehicle, as well as the two organizations SRON/SRU and ESTEC/SSD, who both provide flight scientific payloads for the SAX satellite.
Having completed the phase B activities in 1988, Alenia Spazio (then Aeritalia GSS) entered the C/D phase in April 1989 with final contract awarded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) in August 1990.
Alenia Spazio, in its role as Prime Contractor, leads an industrial team whose organization and responsibilities are shown in Figure 2. The industrial team sees Laben as main sub-contractor and a collaboration with Fokker Space & System, the latter directly funded by the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes (NIVR) for the AOCS development.
