“Here I feel like I’m in my second home, in the company of my American and Russian colleagues and with my European colleague Matthias Maurer,” for six months in space with the Crew-3 mission: Samantha Cristoforetti said on a call from the European Space Agency (ESA) organized space station to the two European astronauts, Together on the plane for a short time. To salute them, the heads of the European Space Agency, Josef Schbacher, Germany’s Walter Bitzer, and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Giorgio Sacuccia.
Maurer (ESA), the space station is a symbol of cooperation for Earth
The International Space Station (ISS) has always been “a wonderful place for peaceful international cooperation where nations come together to do something good for all of humanity: I would like this symbol to be reflected on Earth as well and for leaders and decision-makers to make beautiful Europe and our beautiful planet a peaceful place where people from all over the world collaborate for the good of humanity.”
After 7 years, many new features appeared on board
On the plane for only three days, AstroSamantha added to “work a lot with colleagues from Crew-3”: an intense period, before their departure, is now imminent. “I found a complex environment,” he said, referring to work on the space station. Referring to his first mission, Futura (2014-2015), the astronaut noted that “after seven years the activities on the ship had grown a lot and his third crewmates had become incredibly generous and patient.” He added that it would be an advantage, to stay close for a few days, “to learn about the many new experiments inside the European Columbus laboratory. Then we will begin the transition to normal days”, when it comes to Cristoforetti and his crew-4 fellow activities on board will become routine.
This time it was easy to adapt
This time adapting to space was easier and faster: he spoke as veteran, Samantha Cristoforetti, on her second space mission. “The adaptation was faster,” he said while calling. “I had the opportunity to travel in a new vehicle, after flying aboard a Soyuz,” the Italian astronaut told his German colleague, referring to his recent flight on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon shuttle. “It was great to have this opportunity, as did Matthias,” who also arrived at the space station on Crew Dragon. “To Matthias – he added – my best wishes to be able to fly a new spacecraft, a European one.”
Maurer, AstroSam Has ‘Excellent Preparation’
“I am very happy to see Samantha here in space to take over European command, and I am convinced that she will continue all the extraordinary work that has been prepared on Earth by scientists and sent here”: She has an “excellent level of preparedness and will not have any problems in months,” said Matthias Maurer. to conduct all experiments.
Ready to pack up for back to Earth in the next few days (“It depends on the weather, we can leave tomorrow, a day later, or a week later”), Maurer will spend the next few hours passing on the knowledge accumulated in recent months to new arrivals from Crew-4. However, with Samantha Cristoforetti, it won’t take long: “Once he resumed floating here, it looked as if he had never left the space station,” he asserts.
In his speech, the German cosmonaut noted that thanks to his predecessor Thomas Pesquet and now thanks to Christoforiti, a year and a half of European presence on the International Space Station has been achieved, an “exceptional result”. About his assignment at CosmicKiss, which is now in its final stages, Maurer said, “I am very happy that all the trials that were set up went smoothly. I hope we have achieved great results that will keep researchers busy for months or even years to come.”
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