The first woman from Europe will be at the ISS in 2014

Samantha Cristoforetti, from the European Space Agency, will leave in 2014 at the Russian Soyuz from the Baikonur cosmodrome, and will become the first European woman-astronaut to visit the ISS.

Thomas Reiter, Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations in the European Space Agency, said that the mission of the Italian astronaut will last 6-7 months.

“With great satisfaction, we see how the third astronaut from the 2009 set was appointed to space in space,” he said.

Samantha Christophoretti completed the basic training in 2010, now she trains work in the Russian transport ship "Soyuz", studies the ISS systems, as well as VKD technologies. It has the title of Air Force captain Italy, with a raid of more than 500 hours on six types of military aircraft, the agency’s website reports.

Recall that on June 19, the Chinese spacecraft “Shenzhou-9” delivered three taiconauts to the Chinese space station of Tiangun-1, including a woman, Liu Yang.

The first woman who visited the orbital station was Svetlana Savitskaya (USSR), in August 1982. The first woman-commander of the ISS was Peggy Ennettte Whitson from NASA, from October 2007 to April 2008 during the ISS-16 expedition.

It is planned that the astronaut NASA Sunita “Suni” Lin Williams (“Suni” Lyn Williams), whose start on the Soyuz TMA-05M piloted ship, is together with Yuri Malenchenko (Roskosmos) and Akihiko Hoshida (Jaxa) is scheduled for July 15 from Baikonur, will be a barrel of the expedition. ISS 32/33.