Moscow – “The City of Stars,” the military space research center near Moscow, is currently training Captain Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian Air Force pilot and astronaut, who qualified as back-up crew for the ISS 40/41 mission departing from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at the end of the month. The training is being conducted at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia, along with colleagues Anton Shkaplerov of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Terry Virts from NASA. This is the second long-duration mission for ISA (the Italian Space Agency), which, starting in November, will involve Cristoforetti as the first Italian woman in space. (9Colonne)
