Maurizio Cheli
 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Maurizio Cheli | |
|---|---|
1992 ESA Group | |
| Missions | STS-75 |
Mission insignia |  |
Maurizio Cheli (born 4 May 1959, in Zocca) is an Italian air force officer, a European Space Agency astronaut and a veteran of one NASA Space Shuttle mission.
A native of
University of Rome La Sapienza and earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Houston. He then trained with the United States Air Force and was selected as an astronaut candidate by the European Space Agency in 1992. He holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Italian Air Force. He flew aboard STS-75
in 1996 as a mission specialist.
That same year he joined Alenia Aeronautica, and two years later he became Chief Test Pilot for combat aircraft. His last test program was for the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Maurizio Cheli has more than 380 hours of space activity and more than 4500 flying hours on more than 50 different aircraft types.
He is married to fellow former ESA astronaut Marianne Merchez.
During the 2009
Torino World Air Games
, on 12 June 2009 the SkySpark experimental aircraft piloted by Cheli logged the speed world record for its class, powered by an electric engine designed by the DigiSky, an aviation technologies firm founded by Cheli himself in 2005.
External links
- Official web site Mauriziocheli.com
- ESA profile page
- NASA Biography
- Spacefacts biography of Maurizio Cheli
NASA Astronaut Group 13 ← NASA Astronaut Group 14 → NASA Astronaut Group 15 | |||||||
| Pilots |
| ||||||
| Mission specialists |
| ||||||
| International mission specialists |
| ||||||
| |||||||
