Roberto Vittori (Viterbo, October 15, 1964) is an ESA astronaut from Italy. He graduated from the Italian Air Force Academy in 1989 and trained in the US. He flew the Tornado in the Italian Air Force before graduating in 1995 from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland. He served at the Italian Test Center as a project pilot for the development of the new European aircraft, the EF2000. He has logged over 1700 hours in over 40 different aircraft to include F-104, Tornado GR1, F-18, AMX, M-2000, G.222 and P-180.
In August 1998, after selection by ESA to join the European Astronaut Corps, he reported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Following a period of training and evaluation, Vittori served in various technical assignments within the NASA Astronaut Office.
From April 25 to May 5, 2002, Roberto Vittori participated in the Soyuz TM-34 taxi-flight to the International Space Station (ISS), under an agreement between the Russian Rosaviakosmos, the Italian Space Agency, ASI and ESA. During his stay aboard ISS he worked alongside the resident crew overseeing four European scientific experiments. The mission successfully delivered a new "lifeboat" to the Station for use by resident crews in the event of an on-board emergency. Vittori returned to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-33.
On April 15, 2005, Roberto Vittori participated in a second taxi-flight to the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz TMA-6, returning to Earth on April 24 in the Soyuz TMA-5 capsule. He became the first European astronaut to visit the ISS twice and conducted experiments in upper limb fatigue in astronauts and germination of herbaceous plant seeds for possible space nutrition.