Paolo Nespoli

He was born in Milan, Italy, and he is an Italian citizen. After having completed a Scientific High School, he was drafted by the Italian Army where he worked first at the military paratrooper school, and then with the Army Special Forces with the rank of warrant officer and officer. From 1982 to 1984 he participated in the Italian Contingent of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force in Beirut, Lebanon, and, after that, resigned from the Army to enroll in Polytechnic University of New York to obtain a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics. He then worked in Italy as a Design Engineer before being hired as Astronaut Trainer by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Cologne, Germany. In 1998 he was selected as Astronaut by the Italian Space Agency, integrated into ESA’s Astronaut Corps, and sent to train at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

He flew his first space flight in 2007 on STS-120, a short-duration Space Shuttle mission for the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). With a Russian Soyuz rocket, he then flew two long-duration missions to the ISS. The first one in 2010-11, Expedition-26/27, and the second in 2017, Expedition-52/53. In his career, he logged 313 days in space. Upon retirement from active duty in 2018, he constituted Astropaolo s.r.l., a company through which he handles speaking engagements, and technical and scientific endeavors.