“The sun is setting, signalling the end of my first orbital day. I catch a glimpse of the Milky Way; I recognise Cassiopeia. There is something so poignant about contemplating it from up here, from inside this metal box, this not particularly cutting-edge bundle of technology that allows us to be here where no human being should ever be.”
This is an excerpt from the diary of astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, now being published with Penguin after she spent 200 days on the International Space Station, longer than any other European.
Cristoforetti’s journey to the space station took long enough, starting with a complicated selection procedure in November 2014, followed by years of training.
All this Cristoforetti describes in her diary, taking readers on a journey that spans the highest of high tech to simpler aspects, such as the fact that a plaster cast is used for the shell for the seats in Russia’s Soyuz spaceship, a procedure that has apparently stood the test of time.
It seems that traditions matter in this world. Cristoforetti writes that those returning from the ISS lay flowers before the statue of Yuri Gagarin in the Star City space training facility outside Moscow.
She describes ritual farewell breakfasts and of the Russian superstition that before travelling anywhere, people should sit down briefly in silence. Before taking off, the astronauts always watch the Soviet film White Sun Of The Desert.
Her book is also packed with facts, such as that the ISS weighs 400 tons, is the size of a football field and orbits 400km above the earth.
Christoforetti, the flight engineer on the Futura mission, details the training for controlling the Soyuz and the countless hours spent in a gigantic pool in Houston, Texas, where the non-Russian ISS modules are replicated underwater in their original size.
Perhaps some of the 400 pages of writing in the Diary Of An Apprentice Astronaut could have been shortened, while occasionally, the many abbreviations disturb the flow of the reading experience. Also, sadly there are no photos besides some illustrations.
And yet page by page, the immensity of the effort involved in getting into space becomes ever clearer. Cristoforetti balances this by explaining the experiments she does in space and what benefits they could have on Earth.
The astronauts travel a lot between Houston and Star City and the book underlines the importance of international cooperation in space and how much astronauts and cosmonauts feel as a community – presumably also because, despite all the training, their missions are still life-threatening. Given this fact, humour is important.
Cristoforetti tells her story chronologically, like a countdown, and takes the reader on a journey through her everyday life as an astronaut on Earth and on the ISS. – dpa
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