Nov. 23, 2015

Twelve months have passed since the Italian astronaut set off for the ISS with the Futura mission, on a record-breaking stay of 200 days and a series of scientific achievements.

The Soyuz TMA-15M was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome at 22:01:13 on 23 November 2014 Italian time, carrying the three members of ISS Expedition 42/43: Russian commander Anton Shkaplerov, US flight engineer Terry Virtsand - as first engineer and co-pilot - Italian Air Force captain and member of the ESA Astronaut Corps Samantha Cristoforetti.
A few minutes after launch, when the capsule entered orbit and before docking with the International Space Station,@AstroSamantha (her social network nickname) officially became the first Italian woman to fly in space.
The flight was extremely fast, bringing the trio to their “cosmic home” in less than six hours. At 3.48 am Italian time on 24 November, the Soyuz had completed its docking manoeuvres and Samantha was the first member of Expedition 42/43 to board the ISS.

Our astronaut's radiant smile on her historic entry on board the station marked the start of the Futura mission, the Italian Space Agency's second longest mission, planned as part of an ASI-NASA bilateral agreement signed in 1997. From that moment, Sam also became the seventh Italian astronaut to go into space and the fifth to have set foot on board the ISS
@AstroSamantha should have stayed on board for six months, returning with her colleagues on 14 May this year, but due to an accident with a Russian Progress cargo shop - which was lost shortly after launch - her re-entry on the Soyuz shuttle with the rest of the Expedition 42/43 team was delayed until 11 June. Her stay therefore lasted for nearly seven months.

200 days on board the ISS, travelling 130 million kilometres in orbit around Earth: these are the numbers that made Sam's mission break two records as well as achieving excellent scientific results.
The first record was for the ESA astronaut with the greatest number of consecutive days in space in a single mission, previously held by Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, while the second was for the consecutive number of days in orbit for a female astronaut, previously held by NASA's Sunita Williams.
@AstroSamantha successfully completed as many as nine experiments, most of which were of a medical, biological and neurological nature, involving leading figure from the Italian academic, scientific and industrial worlds.

However, the most famous experiment was with the ISSpresso, a multi-function coffee machine created by Argotec and Lavazzain a public-private sector partnership with ASI. Designed to investigate the behaviour of fluids and mixtures in microgravity, the machine can serve hot drinks and allowed Samantha to enjoy the typical Italian espresso coffee a month before her re-entry.
So @AstroSamantha is celebrating the first anniversary of her cosmic journey, and by a happy coincidence, 23 November is also a particularly important date for a science fiction fan like her.

In fact, today is also the anniversary of the first episode of the first ever science fiction television series “Doctor Who”, shown on the BBC in 1963. Samantha is sure to have noticed that she shares this special date with the alien who travelled through the universe and moved through space and time on board the “Tardis”.
Lastly, demonstrating how popular @AstroSamantha's mission was on social networks, especially on Twitter, some of the astronaut’s most important tweets have been made into a song called “Rosa Bagliore”, dedicated to the first Italian woman in space, with a video that uses both cartoon animation and images from the Futuramission.