Diego Urbina

Diego Urbina, a 27-year-old electrical engineer from Italy, works joysticks at a laptop computer. ESA says the crew's duties include regular playing of unspecified video games, with the goal of helping to develop computerized "electronic partners" for crewmembers on actual deep-space missions.

"In my free time," Urbina wrote in a July 7 diary entry, "I have been also busy programming an e-mail client and a Twitter client that allow me to send and receive information in the structured way that is needed for mission control, just brushing up my programming skills! (I'm programming it on MATLAB, for the curious)."