Nespoli was part of Expedition 52/53, which started in 2017. He launched on Soyuz MS-05 on 28 July 2017 15:41 UTC. Nespoli's mission to the ISS was called VITA. Vita is an acronym for Vitality, Innovation, Technology and Ability. In addition, in Italian it means life, reflecting the scientific experiments and the technologies needed for life in space. Additional activities included outreach like Mission-X: Train Like an Astronaut, the European Astro Pi Challenge (where European students run their own code on Raspberry Pi mini computers installed on the ISS).