AstroSamantha, along with Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, participated in an extravehicular activity (EVA) on July 21st. The EVA took place during Expedition 67 on the International Space Station. The event was closely followed and commented on in real time by Gabriele Mascetti, head of the Human Spaceflight office at the Italian Space Agency (ASI), Barbara Negri, head of the Human Flights and Scientific Experimentation unit at ASI, and Paolo D’Angelo, a space journalist from the Institutional Communication office.
This was Samantha’s first EVA in her career and she became the first European woman to conduct an activity in open space while wearing a Russian Orlan space suit. The EVA lasted for 7 hours and 5 minutes, ending earlier than expected due to safety concerns regarding the autonomy of the astronauts’ space suit batteries.
During the EVA, Samantha and Oleg worked on the European Robotic Arm (ERA) program. The ERA is a robotic arm capable of “walking” around the Russian segment of the International Space Station. It is 11 meters long, lightweight, and powerful, serving as the main manipulator arm in the Russian part of the Space Station. The astronauts also released ten nanosatellites designed to collect radio electronic data.
Samantha has been on the Minerva European mission since April 27th and this is her second mission after the FUTURA mission from 2014 to 2015, where she set the record for the longest continuous stay in orbit for a woman with a total of 199 days and 16 hours in space. The Crew-4, including Samantha, will remain in orbit as part of Expedition 67 until the end of September.
Videos of the EVA replay can be found here:
– 1st part: [link]
– 2nd part: [link]
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