Cira, the Italian Aerospace Research Center, is about to celebrate its fortieth anniversary; it is a European center of excellence headquartered in Capua, a city in Campania touched by the Volturno. The Center - a company with predominantly public participation (the members are: the CNR with over 52 percent, the Campania region with the ASI consortium with 16 percent, then there are private companies including Leonardo, Thales Alenia Space Italia) - has accumulated the largest endowment of research infrastructures in the aerospace field in Italy, with very special test facilities and state-of-the-art laboratories used by institutions and industries all over the world. At CIRA, 350 researchers, primarily engineers but also mathematicians, physicists, and chemists, of whom more than 100 hold doctorates and are not all very young, investigate whether and how aeronautical and spacecraft can fly autonomously and at extremely high speeds. They create innovative systems to reduce aircraft's environmental impact, improve flight safety, improve air traffic management, and create enabling technologies for future space transport systems. The Icing Wind Tunnel, one of the world's largest wind tunnels for aerodynamic tests in the presence of ice, is located here. In this tunnel, for example, the behavior of the plane's wing when there are water drops is tested. The IWT is the world's only plant capable of simulating altitude, humidity, and temperature all at once. But there's also the Plasma Wind Tunnel. There are two, with the Cira's being the largest in the world, larger than NASA's, and very useful for simulating the shuttle's return from space.
|