Laura Zornoza
Strasbourg (France) (EFE) the position of commander of the International Space Station or going on a spacewalk.
However, she hesitates when asked what her message is to girls who want to be like her.
“I always have doubts about these recommendations to girls because it seems to me that it sounds as if girls need special advice, or as if they have special obstacles or difficulties. The boys and girls are all young human beings and for all of them, if they are interested in space, the path is the same”, says Cristoforetti.
“Look for a career that fits and allows you to work in the space industry: there are the obvious ones, like physics, engineering or any STEM career, but we have more and more colleagues coming from the humanities sector. That is my advice, ”she says, smiling, dressed in a blue uniform in which an Italian flag stands out on the arm and the ESA logo next to her name on her chest.
Work with Russian cosmonauts
The Italian, in Strasbourg (France) to participate in a ceremony in the European Parliament for Women’s Day, spoke in an interview with various media, including EFE, about the “elephant in the room” of working with Russian cosmonauts after the invasion of Ukraine, the big question of whether there is more life in the Solar System or if she will be the first woman to set foot on the Moon.
The Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine began just two months before the start of Cristoforetti’s last trip to space to develop the Minerva mission, in which between April and October 2022 he carried out and supported more than 35 European and international experiments and in which She became the first European woman to command the International Space Station (ISS).
“It was definitely a bit of the elephant in the room at times that such a dramatic conflict was taking place on the planet, but we had a mission to accomplish together and, on a personal level, a strong bond of friendship,” says the astronaut, who says that everyone focused “not on the things that would be a source of conflict on board but on our shared mission, goals and values.”
A woman on the moon
Although she is sure that she will not be the first woman to set foot on the Moon – “unfortunately it will not be a European, it will surely be an American” – she is excited to talk about current and future missions to Mars that look for biological traces to answer the big question of if there is more life in the Solar System.
“Our robotic friends are already exploring Mars, we will have a European ‘rover’ in the near future and, who knows, maybe in the future human explorers as well,” stressed Cristoforetti, who drew applause from the MEPs in front of the plenary session by asking for ambition to take European-made ships into space.
This achievement, he said, would be “a powerful political, strategic, cultural, psychological and even philosophical symbol, an expression of Europe’s ambition to gain a position in space commensurate with its political and economic weight.”
A lot has changed for women in the space industry since in 1983, in preparation for a woman’s (American Sally Ride) first trip into space, NASA workers asked her if a hundred tampons would be enough for her. one week mission.
Cristoforetti, who does not particularly like the anecdote, warns of the risk that these stories convey “the impression that women in space are so rare and unexpected that strange questions like that would arise.”
“I would tell the boys and girls that the space is a workplace like any other and that we all work together,” he says.
Thousands of followers in networks
More than a million people on the internet know her as @AstroSamantha -her name on networks like Twitter or Tiktok- where she accumulates hundreds of thousands of views or ‘likes’ on videos about how a toilet is used in space, how they receive calls from your family or what it is like to have your period in orbit.
“It’s the same as having it on Earth,” he explains in a TikTok from the International Space Station, with his hair disheveled due to the absence of gravity and the smile that accompanies him in all the videos on his profile, for an audience before which defines it as “a European Space Agency astronaut boldly going where no other ‘tiktoker’ has gone”.