Samantha Cristoforetti is italian woman-astronaut

Greetings to all my friends!

After watching a documentary about the first Italian woman astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, I wanted to write about her on Serey.io

The first thing I noticed is that she is incredibly smiling, a smile that never leaves her face. If you could see her eyes light up when she talks about her research work at the Italian Space Agency (Agenzia Spaziale Italiana)? By the way, the only one in Europe, according to Samantha, because Italy has taken a leading role in the space sector in recent years and ASI has direct access to the resources that are used on the ISS.

On board the ISS there are quite a lot of instruments made in Italy, one of which is the well-known Dome, the module of the international space station comprising seven transparent portholes, which allows the observation of the surface of the Earth, of outer space and of the astronauts and technicians working in open space.

She is very nice, absolutely with no overtone about her own superpowers and achievements, absolutely simple and open for communication with ordinary people, who ask her every imaginable and unimaginable question: from a book to the toilet... and she answers these questions concretely, calmly, with a smile, sometimes with a touch of humor and irony. With enthusiasm she tells about complicated gravitational fields, weightlessness, space stations, spacecrafts for delivery to space, about her new dream to fly to the Moon, about her friendship with Russian cosmonauts, whom she met in the Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City.

How she had to learn Russian to read volumes of instructions and documents to pass her spaceflight preparation exam. And with all of that, she was successful. Her childhood dream came true - she was the first woman astronaut in Italy who flew into space, made a spacewalk and stayed 199 days on the station. She was born April 26th 1977 in Milan and spent her childhood years in the small town of Male (Trentino) where her parents Antonella and Sergio are from. In 1996 she received a degree in Science and Technology.

She went to the University of Munich and five years later in 2001 received a master's degree with honors in mechanical engineering. Immediately she continued her studies at the Academy of Aeronautics in Pozzuoli (Naples) and in 2005 she received a bachelor's degree in aeronautics at the University Federico II in Naples. And a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. She even studied for 10 months at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology in Moscow and write her PhD. From 2005 to 2008 Samantha was a pilot in the Italian Air Force, to her credit 500 hours of flight time on fighter jets and other military aircraft.

She persevered to her goal, knowing full well that technical knowledge and the profession of a military pilot can bring her closer to her dream, but it also requires excellent health and a high level of intelligence. Getting into the cosmonaut corps is very difficult, there is an extremely strict multistage selection process. Luck smiled on our heroine during her long-lasting work. In 2008, the European Space Agency announced the start of the selection of candidates for the astronaut corps.

There were 8,413 applications from citizens of 17 European countries. As a result, they approved only six people, including the only woman - Samantha Cristoforetti. She is a polyglot, speaks four foreign languages: French, German, English, Russian and her native Italian. She is currently studying Chinese, which she needs in her work with Chinese colleagues.

 

In 2009, they enrolled her in the European Space Agency's astronaut corps. And from 2010 to 2014, her spaceflight preparations began at Star City and she launched on November 24, 2014, as flight engineer-1 of the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft, a member of the 42nd and 43rd major ISS expeditions along with the spacecraft commander Anton Shkaplerov and flight engineer-2 Terry Werts. On the same day, 5 hours 46 minutes after liftoff, the spacecraft successfully docked to the small research module Rassvet of the ISS Russian Segment.

After the flight, the heroine had many meetings with absolutely different audiences, from Italian children and students to adult audiences. She was asked all kinds of questions, which she answered very frankly, because she understood that people are interested in knowing everything.
To the question: How are the bathrooms on board? Samantha answered that Russian doctors recommend that all astronauts have purging enemas before the flight. And that's very correct, Samantha said. The toilet is available and before you can use it, you must first turn on the fan and the air flow created this way carries liquid and solid waste in the right direction. There is a yellow conical shape for pee-pee and a white conical shape that a plastic bag is put on and makes #2, the Americans called it that when they make a ca-ca. There is special equipment that destroys the waste of life. Also Samantha confirmed that the astronauts have to work for at least 11 hours, which means they can't go to the toilet during that time, so they wear diapers.

There is personal communication aboard the ship at certain email addresses where you can send a message. There is a Space Station e-mail address for service messages, but before that SARSOM will check, according to a regulation in the Mission Control Center in Houston. For personal use, there is a VOIP (Voice-Over-IP) phone that works on outgoing numbers only. And once a week a video conference with relatives.

When asked: What books did you take with you? Samantha replied that only two paper books, since weight matters and you can only take limited luggage with you on a manned ship: Italo Calvino's "Palomar" and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "Pilot de Guerre." And later, two more books by Gianni Rodari were delivered to her.

When asked: Was it difficult for her on the station and what she saw the Earth as? She replied that she enjoyed everything, had no difficulties at all, enjoyed the occasional playful moment, with a touch of weightlessness. And about our Earth, she said it was extraordinarily beautiful, just sensational, with ever-changing landscapes and shades of color that struck her, at times seeming like true works of art.

Here is such a beauty cosmonaut Samantha Cristoforetti.