Italian astronaut becomes online star

As the first Italian female astronaut in space, Cristoforetti carried out her first space mission on Nov 23, 2014. She started the second mission in April and returned to Earth on Friday night after a 127-day stay in orbit.

When not traveling for work, she is an avid reader and has a great passion for languages.

"Always looking to the future, Samantha (Cristoforetti) is learning Chinese in her spare time," the European Space Agency says on its website.

Meanwhile, Cristoforetti has been active in Sino-European cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight. She was a working group member tasked with liaising with Chinese counterparts to define and implement cooperation in the field of astronaut operations. In 2017, she took part in a sea survival exercise organized by the Astronaut Center of China in the Yellow Sea, which was the first joint training of Chinese and foreign astronauts in China.

An agreement was signed in 2015 between China and Europe on cooperation in the field of manned spaceflight, specifying the participation of China and Europe in each other's astronaut training activities. Speaking clear Chinese, Cristoforetti once told the media that the teams from China and Europe were working very well together in the field of astronaut training.

She joined the Italian Air Force in 2001 and had accumulated more than 500 hours of flight experience. In May 2009, Cristoforetti was one of the six chosen from 8,000 European applicants to join the ESA astronaut corps.