Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano
aka 'AstroLuca' returned from the International Space Station
(ISS) Thursday after becoming the first European astronaut to
command it.
Parmitano stepped out of a Soyuz shuttle in Kazakhstan and
smiled to onlookers.
He came back down to earth with colleagues Alexander
Skvortsov and Christina Koch.
Earlier this month Parmitano chatted to Italian Premier
Giuseppe Conte in a video link from the ISS.
"Welcome aboard the International Space Station," said the
Italian astronaut, who is the current commander of the ISS and
has been leading a series of tough spacewalks to service the
cosmic-particle-hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02).
"I'm excited," replied Conte.
"The Space Station is humanity's outpost in space and it is
its greatest feat of engineering.
"Space and scientific research are strategic sectors for
Italy which the government intends to keep focusing on.
"It's a strategic sector because involvement from the
technological point of view makes it possible to develop
increasing awareness of our planet".
Parmitano, who is widely known by his Twitter handle
Astroluca, also hailed Italy's efforts on the space-science
front.
"Italy is on the podium," he said.
"Many of the Italian experiments (on the ISS) are
innovative," he added, citing the example of the newly installed
Italian Mini-Euso telescope.
"It will be able to shoot over 100,000 ultraviolet photos a
second".
Conte asked Parmitano for his assessment so far of the Beyond
mission, with the Italian set to return to Earth on February 6.
"The whole mission has achieved superlative results in terms
of the quantity of work done and this is only thanks to the
crew," he said.
"We are a highly important example of team work.
"There are three very demanding weeks to go before the end of
the mission.
"Every spacewalk has a very high risk component.
"You just have to remember that a fault in my space suit
(during a spacewalk) six years ago caused a water leak in the
helmet, putting my life in danger.
"Although this mission's space walks have a much higher
tariff, there haven't been an technical difficulties, apart from
the job itself.
"It was particularly difficult to have worked almost totally
from the Canadarm, with my legs locked to the robotic arm my
only link to the Space Station".
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