Maurizio Cheli, former ESA astronaut

From 22 February 1996 until 9 March 1996, Maurizio Cheli flew on Shuttle Mission STS-75 together with Claude Nicollier and Umberto Guidoni. The principle payloads on STS-75 were the reflight of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS) and the third flight of the United States Microgravity Payload (USMP-3). The TSS experiment produced a wealth of new information on the electrodynamics of tethers and plasma physics, it successfully demonstrated the ability of tethers to produce electricity. Maurizio Cheli left the Agency on 30 June 1996.