Samantha Cristoforetti makes history and becomes first European woman to complete a spacewalk

Virgin Radio

2 Aug 2022, 10:03

Wow. Italian astronaut, aviator and engineer Samantha Cristoforetti has gone down in history by becoming the first European woman to complete her first spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS).

Joined by cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, pictures of the pair were captured in July by the European Space Agency (ESA) and showed the proud astronaut on her first-ever spacewalk, otherwise known as an Extravehicular Activity (EVA).

During their spacewalk, which took around seven hours, they worked on jobs including 'deploying nanosatellites, installing platforms and workstation adapter hardware mounted on Nauka'.

Flying the flag as the first and only active European female astronaut, Samantha has a Barbie doll based on her to celebrate ‘Women in Space’ and inspire young girls to launch into a career in the STEM field: space and science, technology, maths and engineering.

Cristoforetti is 'a mission specialist and on the ISS she is responsible for all activities within the US Orbital Segment for the duration of her mission' including the US, European, Japanese and Canadian modules and components of the Space Station.

She wrote on Twitter after the mission: "Just two words: THANK YOU! Thank you all in Europe, Moscow, Houston and on @Space_Station.

"Thanks for working to make this possible, thanks for the training, the planning, the real-time support, the videos and pictures, the trust and the encouragement. It was a dream come true."

In another post, she inspired followers and wrote: "Carry your love with me in space."