Podcast
“Die Boss”
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti: “My daughter thinks it’s cool that I’m going into space”
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is the first woman from Europe to take command of the ISS.
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Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti becomes the first European to serve as commander of the ISS. in the sternpodcast “Die Boss” she talks about expectations on board and tells how she combines family and career.
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Soon she will be able to go again: Samantha Cristoforetti will be the first woman from Europe to take command of the ISS in spring 2022. Her big dream came true seven years ago, when the Italian flew into space for the first time and worked as an astronaut on the International Space Station ISS for several months. “It’s a very special place,” she says sternpodcast “Die Boss” and says that when she returned to Earth, she felt the pain of separation. Life on the spaceship is not easy.
“It’s an environment that calls for self-control. If you have the feeling that something isn’t quite working out or that you’re reaching your limits, you’re normally expected not to show it,” Cristoforetti tells hostess Simone Menne about the requirements for astronauts. Conflicts within the crew should ideally not arise in the first place or be resolved quickly. There’s a lot of cultural pressure there. “It’s amazingly peaceful up there,” she assures. She doesn’t feel afraid. “Because the environment is familiar to me and I simply feel comfortable on spaceships or in airplanes,” says the trained fighter pilot.
The little daughter knows that mom will soon fly into space
Cristoforetti was selected for the job at the European Space Agency ESA from over 8000 applicants – as the only woman. Even as a child, she was fascinated by space, she grew up in the village with a lot of freedom and developed a thirst for adventure and self-confidence at an early age. And the mother of two passes this serenity on to her children. “Our boy is still a baby, he just turned one and doesn’t understand all this. But the older one will soon be five and she has always known that mom will soon be going back into space. She has a very strong relationship with her father. He’s her main caregiver and we wanted that because we knew I wanted to go away for a while. She just thinks it’s kind of cool,” says Samantha Cristoforetti of her family model.
In the podcast, Menne and Cristoforetti talk about why it is important to her as commander that the crew also have fun together and how she feels about space tourism by Jeff Bezos and Co.
In “The Boss – Power is Female” top women talk among themselves: Hostess and member of the supervisory board Simone Menne (including BMW, Deutsche Post DHL, Henkel) meets female bosses from all areas of society to talk to them about their lives and careers. “Die Boss” appears every fortnight on Wednesdays on stern.de and the Youtube-Kanal from sternas well as on Audio Now and all common podcast platforms.
This podcast episode is first on 11/10. published in 2021