BIOGRAPHIES

Deputy Administrator from 2015–2017, and was responsible for articulating the agency’s vision, providing leadership and policy direction, and representing NASA to the White House, Congress, international partners, and industry. Dr. Newman was the first female engineer and scientist to serve in this role and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Justin St. P. Walsh Justin St. P. Walsh is associate professor of art history and archaeology at Chapman University. He is co-director of the first major archaeological investigation of a human habitation site in space, the International Space Station Archaeological Project (started 2015). He has pioneered new techniques for this research, including the use of historic photography as archaeological evidence. This project is funded by the Australian Research Council. Walsh is also currently the director of a study of intercultural interactions in a pre-Roman Iberian neighborhood at the site of Cástulo, Spain. He is the author of Consumerism in the Ancient World: Imports and Identity Construction (Routledge, 2014), and for many years worked on the American excavations at Morgantina, Sicily.

Jeffrey S. Nesbit Jeffrey S. Nesbit is an architect, urbanist, and received his doctor of design degree (DDes) from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is a research fellow in the Office for Urbanization at Harvard and founding director of the experimental research group Grounding Design, formerly known as Haecceitas Studio. Currently, Nesbit’s research focuses on the 20 th -century American spaceport complex at the intersection of architecture, aerospace history, and the rise of “technical lands.” He has written a number of journal articles and book chapters on infrastructure, history of technology, and urbanization and is co-editor of Chasing the City (Routledge, 2018), Rio de Janeiro: Urban Expansion and Environment (Routledge, 2019), and New Geographies 11 Extraterrestrial (Actar, 2019). Walter Cugno Walter Cugno was born in 1955 in a small village at the bottom of the Alps near the city of Turin in the northwest of Italy. In 1974, he earned a degree in aeronautical engineering, which he later enhanced with aerospace engineering studies while working at Aeritalia, the biggest Italian aerospace company at the time. From his first position in 1975, Walter spent his entire career in the space business, specifically in the field of exploration and human spaceflight, starting with Spacelab, the first European space laboratory, and continuing to important project management responsibilities on International Space Station programs such as Node 2 Harmony, Node 3 Tranquility, Cupola, Permanent Multipurpose Module, Cygnus Cargo. He also had significant roles in projects like Spacehab, Tethered Satellite, IRIS, Lageos II, Hipparcos and BeppoSax. Currently, Walter is responsible for the Turin site of Thales Alenia Space Italia and, as the vice president of the Exploration and Science Domain, his main responsibilities are the management of projects like the ISS, Moon Gateway, Artemis, Space Rider, and ExoMars.

Alice Gorman Associate professor Alice Gorman, from Flinders University, is recognized as one of the world’s foremost scholars in the cutting-edge field of space archaeology. Her research focuses on the archaeology and heritage of space exploration, including space junk, space stations, planetary landing sites, off-earth mining, rocket launch pads, and antennas. As a lead investigator on the International Space Station Archaeological Project (with Justin St. P. Walsh), she has been researching how gravity shapes human culture. She is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a former deputy chair of the Space Industry Association of Australia. Her multi-award-winning book Dr. Space Junk vs. the Universe: Archaeology and the Future was published in 2019. She tweets as @drspacejunk and blogs at Space Age Archaeology.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When preparing a book that requires the cooperation of innumerable individuals and several national agencies across at least two continents, it is impossible to properly credit all those who gave assistance. Nevertheless, we will attempt to acknowledge those who made this publication possible.

Astronaut Cady Coleman initially inspired Roland to pursue a collaborative project with astronauts on the International Space Station. More profoundly, she connected Paolo and Roland in this amazing endeavor. Without Cady’s insight and creativity, the project would never have existed. Astronaut Pamela Melroy was of great assistance in getting the ball rolling on this project as well.

Claudio Sollazzo, Paolo’s mission manager for the Italian Space Agency (ASI), worked the proposal through the bureaucratic channels of both ASI and NASA—and in record time. Short of blackmail, we are not sure how he managed to acquire the approvals for the project, so we won’t ask!

We would like to thank the Italian Space Agency, which through an international barter agreement acquired this flight opportunity from NASA. We thank all the people at ASI who made this mission possible with their work, specifically the agency’s president, Prof. Roberto Battiston, who strongly supported the mission and assigned Claudio to Houston/JSC. Without Prof. Battiston’s direct involvement and support, the flight would not have been possible.

At NASA, we want to thank Delores Abraham, Kennedy Space Center NASA Public Affairs, who requested that Roland