He spent 27 days, 15 hours and 10 minutes in space, during two missions

He was born on August 18th, 1954, has a degree in Astrophysics and in 1990 was selected by the Italian Space Agency as Payload Specialist. On the occasion of the first mission of the Tethered Satellite (STS-46/TSS-1), he was a backup for Malerba. His debut in space was in February 1996, with the Columbia shuttle for the STS-75 mission, which orbited the TSS-1R experiment. In 2001, he was the first European astronaut to enter the International Space Station, which was still under development. This was an acknowledgment to Italy for its role in the manufacturing of the ISS and brought six flights for the ISS and, later on, 1 every 5 years of operation for the modules manufactured in Italy by the ASI.

‣ News

WEDNESDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2022

SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI WILL BE THE COMMANDER OF THE ISS ‣

AstroSamantha will become the first European astronaut in command of the International Space Station MORE...

THURSDAY 21 JULY 2022

ASTROSAMANTHA, THE FIRST EUROPEAN SPACEWALKER ‣

First extravehicular activity for Samantha Cristoforetti MORE...

TUESDAY 19 JULY 2022

AGILE, published the first article about the “New Year’s Burst” ‣

On Friday 15 July, the first detailed study on this "New Year's Burst" was published in the Astrophysical Journal, using data acquired by the AGILE satellite MORE...

MONDAY 11 JULY 2022

Fermi-LAT collaboration has released the updated list of cosmic gamma-ray sources to date ‣

The third release of the Fermi Point Source Catalog (4FGL-DR3) covers 12 years of data taken by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope MORE...

WEDNESDAY 18 MAY 2022

SECOND MEETING IN SPACE WITH ASTROSAMANTHA ‣

The Italian experiments of the Minerva mission were presented MORE...