Roberto Vittori

Roberto Vittori

Country:	Italy
Organization:	ESA
selected on	July 1998
Calls:	3 space flights
Start of the first space flight:	April 25, 2002
Landing of the last space flight:	June 1, 2011
Time in space:	35d 12h 26min
Space flights
Soyuz TM-34 / Soyuz TM-33 (2002) ISS Marco Polo Soyuz TMA-6 / Soyuz TMA-5 (2005) Eneide STS-134 (2011)

Roberto Vittori (born October 15, 1964 in Viterbo , Italy ) is an Italian astronaut .

Military career

Vittori graduated from the Italian Accademia Aeronautica in 1989 and received further training in the USA . He flew tornadoes in the Italian Air Force before graduating from the United States Naval Test Pilot School on Naval Air Station Patuxent River , Maryland in 1995 . He then served at the Italian test center as a pilot for the development of the Eurofighter . He has completed over 1700 flight hours in more than forty different aircraft including the F-104 Starfighter , Panavia Tornado , McDonnell Douglas F / A-18 , AMX , Dassault Mirage 2000 , Aeritalia G 222 and Piaggio P.180 .

Astronaut career

From April 25 to May 5, 2002 Roberto Vittori flew with Soyuz TM-34 to the International Space Station (ISS) under an agreement between the Russian Rosaviakosmos , the Italian space agency ASI and the ESA . On June 24, 2002 the asteroid (37022) Robertovittori was named after him. On April 15, 2005 Roberto Vittori flew to the ISS a second time, this time with Soyuz TMA-6 and returned to Earth on April 24 in Soyuz TMA-5 .

On board the Soyuz-TMA-6 was a painting by the German-Russian artist George Pusenkoff Single Mona Lisa (1: 1) , which shows an alienated image of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci . This art action, initiated by Pusenkoff, was made possible mainly through the work of the then Italian ambassador to Russia, Gianfranco Facco Bonetti . Roberto Vittori took both photos and videos of the work on the International Space Station and brought the work back to Earth on April 24th. The photos are documented in the book Mona Lisa Travels . In addition to Pusenkoff's original painting, an artificially created crystal also flew on this mission, on which an image of the painting was applied using nanotechnology . This crystal remained permanently on the space station.

Roberto Vittori was the first Western European to visit the ISS twice.

Vittori's third space flight was the STS-134 mission with the US space shuttle . The launch of this last mission of the space shuttle Endeavor took place on May 16, 2011, the landing on June 1, 2011.

Before Paolo Nespoli , Vittori was also the first Western European to fly to the ISS three times.

Summary

No.	mission	function	Flight period	Flight duration
1	Soyuz TM-34 / Soyuz TM-33	Flight engineer	04/25 - 05/05/2002	9d 21h 25m
2	Soyuz TMA-6 / Soyuz TMA-5	Flight engineer	April 15-24, 2005	9d 21h 22m
3	STS-134	Mission specialist	16.05. - 01.06.2011	15d 17h 39m

Web links

Commons : Roberto Vittori - collection of images, videos and audio files

Short biography of Roberto Vittori at spacefacts.de
ESA biography of Roberto Vittori (English)
Biography of Roberto Vittori in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English)

Individual evidence

↑ David Galloway (Ed.): Mona Lisa Travels . Kerber, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-86678-070-5 .
↑ NASA Assigns Crew for STS-134 Shuttle Mission, Change to STS-132. NASA, August 11, 2009, accessed August 12, 2009 .

personal data
SURNAME	Vittori, Roberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH	October 15, 1964
PLACE OF BIRTH	Viterbo

[1] David Galloway (Ed.): Mona Lisa Travels . Kerber, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-86678-070-5 .

[2] NASA Assigns Crew for STS-134 Shuttle Mission, Change to STS-132. NASA, August 11, 2009, accessed August 12, 2009 .