Italy’s first female astronaut is a moniker that Samantha Cristoforetti can wear with pride for all eternity but if it’s proof pics you need, we’ve got you covered. While Samantha was onboard the Space station during her 200 day stint, incidentally the longest ever flight for a female astronaut, her camera was a constant companion.
Samantha was selected to be an astronaut for the European Space Agency in 2009, a childhood dream, and over the past six years, she has posted thousands of images to her Flickr page much like one of her predecessors Chris Hadfield.
Recently while back on Earth Samantha took a little bit of time out to chat with the cheerful bods at Weekly Flickr and tell them about how she captured her experience through photographs. Here’s the video which was only posted a few hours ago and at time of typing has less than 30 views.
For us mere mortals the choice by astronauts to take photographs whilst onboard the Space station gives us a glimpse into a world it is unlikely any of will ever see. There’s a lot to be said about the ‘wow factor’ as far as location is concerned.
Of course, Italy is Samantha’s favourite place to photograph from Space, despite being a biased resident she says “..I do think that Italy is very photogenic.” Although sometimes it was worth turning the camera towards the skies and confirming the age old, annoying question of why do you never see the stars from the ISS (Hint: you do.) Here’s a brief glimpse of comet Lovejoy followed by her homesake:
Moved by the beauty she witnessed from more than 200 miles up, Samantha sees shared responsibility for humanity on Earth as continue our voyage through space. “We have to start to perceive ourselves more and more as the crew of this spaceship — not passengers or tourists, but as crew members who actually need to take care of it, and each other, just like we do on the space station.”
Visit Samantha’s Flickr Photostream to see more of her work.
Related: That Photo of the Eclipse from the ISS is FAKE. Here are the Real Ones (and they’re not very good.)
Phogotraphy 
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