physics

Roberto Vittori

Roberto Vittori is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Roberto Vittori rather than just read about it. In short: Brigadier Roberto Vittori, OMRI (born 15 October 1964, in Viterbo) is an Italian Air Force officer and an ESA astronaut. After graduating from the Italian Accademia Aeronautica in 1989, Vittori flew in the Italian Air Force.

Key takeaways

Roberto Vittori belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Roberto Vittori to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Roberto Vittori from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Brigadier Roberto Vittori, OMRI (born 15 October 1964, in Viterbo) is an Italian Air Force officer and an ESA astronaut. After graduating from the Italian Accademia Aeronautica in 1989, Vittori flew in the Italian Air Force. He then trained as a test pilot in the United States. In 1998, Vittori was selected by the ESA to join the European Astronaut Corps. Since then, he has participated in three spaceflights: the Soyuz TM-34/33 and Soyuz TMA-6/5 taxi flights to the ISS, as well as STS-134, the penultimate mission of the American Space Shuttle Program in 2011. He was the last non-American to fly aboard the Shuttle.

Career Vittori graduated from the Italian Air Force Academy in 1989 and trained in the United States. 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 where he was the first in his class. He served at the Italian Test Center as a project pilot for the development of the new European aircraft, the EF2000. Vittori flew Tornado GR1 aircraft with the 155º Gruppo, 50° Stormo, in Piacenza, Italy from 1991 to 1994. During that time, he qualified for day/night air-to-air refuelling as well as a formation leader. He has logged over 1700 hours in over 40 different aircraft including F-104, 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.

Soyuz TM-34 From April 25 to May 5, 2002, 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 the 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.

Soyuz TMA-6 On 15 April 2005 Vittori participated in a second taxi-flight to the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz TMA-6, returning to Earth on 24 April 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. The astronaut also had a painting of the artist George Pusenkoff titled Single Mona Lisa (1:1) with him and took photos with it on the International Space Station. It is the ultimate continuation of the project "Mona Lisa Travels" developed by Pusenkoff and could only be realized under difficult conditions. The authorities found the idea good in theory, but constantly put forward new reasons why the project was unrealizable. Only when George Pusenkoff wrote to the then Italian ambassador in Russia, Gianfranco Facco Bonetti, the possibility of realizing the idea arose. The connection between science and art, which was also important in Leonardo da Vinci's life, found here an "actualization" in the form of this journey of an image of Mona Lisa into space. For the action, Pusenkoff's painting was removed from the frame so that it could be rolled. On April 25, 2005, Vittori took the painting back to the Earth with him.

STS-134 Vittori was a mission specialist for NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-134 in 2011. He is the last non-US astronaut to have flown on the Shuttle.

Personal life Vittori has 3 sons. While living in Washington, DC in 2015, Vittori was nearly single-handedly responsible for the rerouting of flight paths from Reagan National Airport over DC's Ward 3 to other routes. As reported by WAMU, of the 8,760 complaints about Reagan National filed with the airports authority in 2015, 6,852 came from one household in DC's Foxhall neighborhood (Vittori's).

Gallery

References

External links

Roberto Vittori on Facebook ESA profile page NASA Biography Spacefacts biography of Roberto Vittori [1]

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Roberto Vittori

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Roberto Vittori claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Roberto Vittori before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Roberto Vittori ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Roberto Vittori

In research: Roberto Vittori appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Roberto Vittori in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Roberto Vittori is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, Accademia Aeronautica alumni, Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Roberto Vittori outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Roberto Vittori in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Roberto Vittori means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Roberto Vittori out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Roberto Vittori in simple terms?

Why does Roberto Vittori matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Roberto Vittori?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Roberto Vittori.