Nicola Pecile (born March 11, 1973, Udine) is an Italian commercial astronaut who works for

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company i ...

."Mr. Nicola Pecile" He graduated from the

Accademia Aeronautica The Accademia Aeronautica is the Italian Air Force Academy, the institute for the training of Air Force officers. It's located in Pozzuoli in the province of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. Among the oldest aviation academies in th ...

and served with the ''

Aeronautica Militare , colours = , colours_label = , march = (Ordinance March of the Air Force) by Alberto Di Miniello , mascot = , anniversaries = 28 March ...

'' (Italian Air Force) flying Panavia Tornado combat aircraft. Selected to train as a test pilot, he qualified at the EPNER school in 2003. As a test pilot, he tested new armament integrations for the Tornado and AMX International AMX He completed a master's degree in Astronautical Engineering at the School of Aerospace Engineering of

La Sapienza The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

, Rome. In 2011, he retired from the air force and migrated to the United States. There, he taught at the National Test Pilot School in Mojave, California. In 2015, he joined

to work on the SpaceShipTwo program. As of 2023, he had logged 8,000 flying hours on 170 different aircraft.

References

Sources

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pecile, Nicola Italian test pilots People from Fagagna People from Udine Italian Air Force officers Virgin Galactic Living people Commercial astronauts People who have flown in suborbital spaceflight American test pilots 1973 births