Pope Speaks To Astronauts At International Space Station

By: Bill Waters
05/21/2011 01:17 PM ET

The Vatican says Pope Benedict’s XVI’s audio and video hooked up on Saturday as he speaks to the Astronauts at the International Space Station.

It will be streamed live on the Internet site of Vatican Radio and CTV, the broadcasting arms of the Holy See. The pontiff is expected to greet all the crew. However, according to the Vatican he will chat in particular with the two Italian astronauts aboard, Paolo Nespoli and Roberto Vittori.

Nespoli first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as a mission specialist of STS-120 in 2007. In the December of 2010 he again traveled into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft as an Expedition 26/27 flight engineer.

Vittori is an Italian air force officer and an ESA astronaut. He is carrying with him a silver medal donated by the pope. The 46-year-old is currently a Mission Specialist for NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-134. He will be the last non-US astronaut to fly on the Shuttle. The others on the space station are Russian and American. The hookup was originally set for May 4 after the shuttle Endeavour was due to dock with the station. But an electrical problem set back Endeavour’s launch until May 16.