ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti will visit the Technical University of Munich (TUM) on Thursday, June 2, 2016. Beginning at 5pm in the lecture hall MW 1801 of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, she will report on her time in the International Space Station (ISS). For Cristoferetti this is, so to speak, a home game: She studied aerospace engineering at TUM from 1996 to 2001.

Samantha Cristoforetti took off for the ISS in November 2014 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and remained in space for a total of 199 days and 17 hours. With that, the native of Italy holds the record for long-duration spaceflight by a woman. She will talk about her experiences on Thursday, June 2, at 17:00 in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in lecture hall MW 1801. Cristoforetti herself studied aerospace engineering there from 1996 to 2001. She was a member of the student group WARR and active in the student council.

Further studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse and at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology in Moscow followed the completion of her engineering diploma at TUM, so that in addition to her native tongue, Italian, she also speaks fluent German, English, and French and has good proficiency in Russian. In 2005 she completed her training as a pilot in the Italian air force. Admission to the event is free within the framework of the forum Munich Aerospace. After the talk, members of the audience will be able to ask the astronaut their own questions.

Cristoforetti became popular on social media during her stay at the International Space Station for posting photos of the Earth from space on Twitter.