Samantha Cristoforetti becomes the first European woman to go into space

A small step for her, a giant leap for Europe. Italian Samantha Cristoforetti conducted the first spacewalk of a European astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, July 22, according to images released by NASA. The spacewalk of the European Space Agency (ESA) cosmonaut, at an altitude of more than 400 km, took six and a half hours in the company of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev.

They were responsible for making several repairs, notably in the Russian scientific unit Nauka and the new ERA (European Robotic Arm) robotic arm. The ERA robotic arm was launched into orbit in July 2021 after several delays, and was installed on the International Space Station a few months ago. At 11 meters in length, it can perform maintenance tasks and can be operated from inside or outside the station and even from an ESA station on the ground.

This is the second time in space for Samantha Cristoforetti, a 45-year-old engineer and fighter pilot, who departed for the International Space Station on April 27. It holds the record for the longest stay in space there for a woman on a mission, with 199 days remaining in orbit, in 2014 and 2015. This time she must command the station there, another first for a European astronaut.