> I think vaticanobservatory.org is run by the Vatican Observatory Foundation (a private foundation supporting some aspects of the VO's work) whereas vaticanobservatory.va is run by the Vatican Observatory in the strict sense (the government department of the State of Vatican City.)

This exactly. When our agency was working with them, there was some initial hope that we could consolidate the websites on the .va property, but we quickly realized that was not going to happen, primarily due to the separation required with the foundation wing.

Also, it is in general very difficult for an outside vendor to get clearance to build on a .va domain, and you need someone internally to apply a lot of leverage to get the wheels spinning with Vatican IT. Our agency was able to do this with building out the migrants-refugees.va website, thanks to the help of (now Cardinal) Michael Czerny who ran the M&R Section at the time and was given a lot of direct executive power from Pope Francis, but boy, that was still not easy.