Italian space agency science on the international space station: The vita mission

Thanks to the ASI/NASA MoU for the MPLM/PMM modules, the Italian Space Agency has access to the ISS utilization resources. In this frame, ASI has carried out over the years a thorough ISS Utilization program through 58 on board investigations in the fileds of biology and biotechnology, earth and space science, eductional activities and outreach, human research, phisical science and technology development and demonstration. Furthermore, ASI accrued three Shuttle flight crew member opportunities and the rights to one ASI provided ISS crew member for one on orbit increment every five years, with an assured minimum of three. Within this frame, ASI has assigned Italian astronauts of the European Astronaut Corp to three short-duration flight opportunities to ISS, namely Shuttle flights STS-100 (Umberto Guidoni), STS-120 (Paolo Nespoli, Esperia) and STS-134 (Roberto Vittori, DAMA), and to three ISS long-duration flight opportunities, with Luca Parmitano assigned to ISS Expedition 36/37 (Volare), Samantha Cristoforetti, the first Italian woman in space, assigned to ISS Expedition 42/43 (Futura) and finally again Paolo Nespoli, for his third visit to the ISS with the VITA mission. In order to complement the VITA Mission the Italian Space Agency coordinated a pool of scientists, industries leaders in innovative technological fields and academic researchers who worked on the design and implementation of payloads, experiments and scientific protocols in the fields of human physiology, cell biology, countermeasures, physical sciences, technological demonstrations and educational activities. ASI has taken advance of the industrial support by Kayser Italia, which provided services for the new payloads integration process, operations and logistics. Following a call for research opportunities, as well as promoting public-private partnership, ASI appointed for the VITA mission a total of 11 investigations, involving 29 different institutions and about 40 investigators. The experiments require: the use of ASI flight hardware developed for previous experiments, available either on ground or on-board; the access to on-board facilities provided by NASA and ESA, under ad-hoc agreements; the development of new payloads. The paper presents the investigations relevant to the VITA mission, describes the flight hardware and the major tasks relevant to the mission integration, the ground processing and the on-orbit operations. As well, a description of the ASI education and communication initiatives for the VITA Mission, jointly implemented with ESA, is provided. © 2017 by the International Astronautical Federation. All rights reserved.