Marco Folino has been Appointed Managing Director and CEO of Spaceopal

​Munich, Germany, June 24, 2020--Spaceopal announced today the appointment of Marco Folino as Managing Director and CEO of the company.He succeeds to Paolo Minciacchi, who has been appointed CEO of e-GEOS, a Telespazio and Italian Space Agency joint venture.

Folino was born in 1959, in Rome ( Italy). He graduated from Università La Sapienza (Rome), and holds a Master of Science in Electronic Engineering. Marco began his professional career in 1985 as an analyst/programmer. In 1987 He joined Datamat Spa, after fulfilling a number of strategic operational and managerial roles in different market domains. In 1988 He was promoted to Head of Meteorology & Environment Unit. From 2004-2010, under Elsag Datamat (previously Datamat), Marco was the Head of a number of business units for Space & Environment (including Director of Dataspazio SpA and Elsag Datamat Space Business Unit). In 2011 Elsag Datamat Space Business Unit was merged into Telespazio SpA and Marco took up the position of Head of Satellite Systems & Applications Italian Business Unit. In 2013 He was appointed as Director of Satellite Systems and Applications Business Unit with responsibilities at transnational level. In 2017 Marco Folino was appointed CEO of Telespazio VEGA UK.

Spaceopal GmbH, with headquarters in Munich, is a joint venture founded in 2009 by the partners DLR Gesellschaft für Raumfahrtanwendungen (GfR) mbH and Telespazio S.p.A. (a Leonardo and Thales Company). From November 2010 until end of June 2017, Spaceopal has been the Prime Contractor responsible for Galileo operations under the Galileo Full Operational Capability (FOC) Operations Framework contract, regulated by two control centres through a worldwide network of ground stations. Since July 1, 2017, after a 2-year long international competitive tender, ran by the European GNSS Agency (GSA), Spaceopal GmbH will continue to operate the Galileo satellite fleet under the Galileo Service Operator (GSOp) contract and will thus ensure the provision of the Galileo services to the worldwide community.