The sky is not the limit
Samantha Cristoforetti
Samantha Cristoforetti is a woman of superlatives and premieres: In
2022 she was the first female European commander of the International
Space Station ISS, and the first Italian woman in space- what is more,
no other European woman has spent a longer uninterrupted period in
space (199 days and 16 hours). The Italian ESA astronaut is considered
one of the people most likely to become the first European woman to
fly to the moon.
Cristoforetti is a staunch European. She has taken part in the
Erasmus+ exchange programme several times and studied at the Technical
University of Munich, in France and Italy. These days she lives with
her family close to the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne.