Paris (AFP)
Italy's Samantha Cristoforetti will be the first European female astronaut to take command of the International Space Station, during her mission scheduled for 2022, the European Space Agency said in a statement on Friday.
Aged 44, Samantha Cristoforetti, a former fighter pilot, is the first Italian woman astronaut.
It will launch in 2022 towards the Station alongside NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Bob Hines from Florida (United States).
This will be the second time on the ISS for the astronaut, who had set the record for the longest stay in space for a woman on a mission.
It had then spent 199 days in orbit, in 2014 and 2015.
Samantha Cristoforetti will be the fifth ESA astronaut to take command of the ISS, according to ESA.
Its director general Josef Aschbacher considered that this appointment "is a source of inspiration for a whole generation currently applying to join the ESA Astronaut Corps," the statement said.
At the end of March, the agency launched a recruitment campaign for its future class of astronauts.
Samantha Cristoforetti belongs to that of 2009, like the Frenchman Thomas Pesquet.
Currently on the ISS, the latter will take command at the end of his mission.
The appointment of a pilot-in-command is made on a consensual basis by a body made up of representatives of the five partner space agencies of the ISS (American NASA, Russian Roscosmos, Japanese JAXA, Canadian CSA and ESA).
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