This will be the third mission and the second long one for the 58 year-old Milanese aeronautical engineer. He will take off from the secret Russian cosmodrome of Baikonur in Kazakhstan on May 30, 2017. The crew of the Soyuz MS-05 will include the commander, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer who like Nespoli will be there in the role of onboard engineer.
  Yurchikhin was on mission 36/37 renamed Volare, with Luca Parmitano May in November 2013. "I felt proud and honoured to return to orbit with the Italian flag and the ASI logo to make use of my experience developed over all these years. There are many Italian astronauts and who knows, maybe we will go to Mars and perhaps even further," said Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli during the official presentation of mission 52/53. For the occasion, Nespoli wore the blue shirt of his first mission, the STS-120 which took place between Oct. 23 and Nov. 7, 2007 when he flew out on the Shuttle Discovery. "Everything began late last year when I was thinking about what to do next. The president of ASI Battiston called me to ask about my availability. He surprised me because I was deciding my future.
  For an astronaut it is hard to say no when there's the chance to go into space. In space I will be an astronaut, but also a mechanic, electrician, and space crane operator and I will be grateful if there are specific experiments." The ASI chief added that the possibility of a period of Italian command of the International Space Station was under evaluation. (AGI)