Samantha Cristoforetti is poised to become the first Italian woman to go into space.
The astronaut is currently completing the final stages of her preparation on Russia's Baikonur base in Kazakhstan and will blast off on Sunday at 10:01 a.m., Italian time.
Her mission, Futura, is the second Italian Space Agency (ASI) one of long duration, and part of the 1997 ASI-NASA bilateral agreement for the supply of three pressurized habitation modules. The first was the 2013 Volare mission with Luca Parmitano.
Futura's symbol was designed by Turin's Valerio Papeti and shows a sun shining in the dawn between a blue earth and white stars, with the International Space Station (ISS) shooting between them. Born in 1977 in Milan, Cristoforetti grew up in the town of Malè in the northern Trentino region, and was selected to be a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut in 2009. She is both the first Italian astronaut and the only female one in Europe. An Italian Air Force captain, she holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Munich University. The Futura mission has a packed schedule for the six months it is expected to take - 200 experiments (including 10 Italian ones) including a 3D printer for future 'spare space parts' and a 'corner bar' that aims to study how fluids react in space. Mediterranean cuisine will be stocked for all the astronauts and there will be ingredients available to invent new dishes.
Cristoforetti will not be making any space walks, though she had very much wanted to. The astronaut decided to bring with her into space both the flag of the WeFly team, the world's only team in which two of the three pilots are disabled, and booklets in which she has collected texts detailing the relationship between man and the stars, ranging from poetry to the equation that describes how a rocket designed in the early 1900s by the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky works.
For months, Cristoforetti has been dreaming of the moment she will enter the ISS.
"Going into space is a dream come true, the point of arrival in a decades-long personal and professional history," she said.
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