There was a time when satellites seemed like celestial beings, and Giuliano Berretta was their gentle tamer. Berretta passed away at the age of 84 in his home in Rome, Italy.
An engineer by training, he began his ascent among electronic circuits and antennas. He worked first with Selenia, Telettra, the European Space Agency in Paris, and in 1990 he joined Eutelsat, starting as commercial director and becoming director general in 1998. Under his leadership, Eutelsat was transformed from a technical body into a major enterprise: Privatized in 2001, listed on the stock exchange in 2005, and valued at 7 billion euro. Berretta later founded Skylogic, a Turin-based subsidiary of Eutelsat focused on broadband satellite communications.
One episode captures Berretta’s spirit perfectly: thanks to his involvement, Eutelsat helped to recover a section of the Elettra, Guglielmo Marconi’s laboratory-yacht, and transported it to the Eutelsat site on Mount Fucino in Avezzano, Italy. It was then that Video Age featured an interview with him. This reporter met him again, years later within the Associazione Amici di Roberto Morrione (which he co-founded), supporting investigative journalists under the age of 30.
Berretta received many honors — among them, an honorary degree in Management Engineering from the University of Bologna in 2001. (By Enzo Chiarullo)
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