Roberto Vittori

  • ISS Marco Polo   Soyuz TM -33 TM-34/Sojus (2002)
  • Soyuz TMA -5 TMA-6/Sojus (2005)

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

Military career

Vittori graduated in 1989 from the Italian Air Force Academy Pozzuoli and was further trained in the USA. He flew tornadoes in the Italian Air Force before moving on to the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland graduated in 1995 at the United States Naval Test Pilot School. Thereafter, he served in the Italian test center as a pilot for the development of Euro Fighters. He has logged over 1700 flight hours in more than forty different aircraft such as the F- 104 Starfighter, Panavia Tornado, McDonnell Douglas F/A-18, AMX, Dassault Mirage 2000, Aeritalia G 222 and Piaggio P.180.

Spaceman career

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

He was the first Western Europeans, who has twice visited the ISS.

Vittori's third space flight mission STS -134 Shuttle was with the U.S. Space. The start to this final mission of the space shuttle Endeavour took place on 16 May 2011, the landing on June 1, 2011.

On 24 June 2002 the asteroid ( 37022 ) Robertovittori was named after him.

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