At 11:11am (GMT) tomorrow, Pope Benedict XVI will place a call to the International Space Station.  The call on May 21st marks the first ever papal call to the Space Station.

ESA astronauts Roberto Vittori and Paolo Nespoli and their colleagues will talk for 20 minutes with His Holiness, who will be in the Foconi Room of the Vatican Library.

Present at the event in the Vatican will be Thomas Reiter, ESA Director for Human Spaceflight and Operations, Enrico Saggese, President of the Italian Space Agency, and General Giuseppe Bernardis, Italian Air Force. The event will be broadcast live.

His Holiness will talk with the crew in English and also address ESA’s two Italian astronauts in Italian.

The event will be streamed on the European Space Agency’s web site at www.esa.int and will be broadcast on ESA TV.