A DOCUMENTARY FILM ON SAMANTHA CRISTOFORETTI, THE FIRST ITALIAN WOMAN TO TRAVEL TO SPACE. THIS IS A WORLD EXCLUSIVE ON THE LIFE, PREPARATION AND TRAINING INVOLVED BEFORE BLAST OFF. ON 23RD NOVEMBER ON RAI 3 AT 22:20.

For the first time, a documentary has been made on the training of an astronaut at training centres spanning 3 continents. Samantha Cristoforetti’s space adventure (the “Futura Mission”) will begin on November 23rd on board the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft at the cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

She will be the first Italian woman to go into space and the 3rd European woman, preceded only by Helen Sharman from the UK (in 1991) and Caludie André-Deshays from France (in 2001).
Samantha Cristoforetti is an engineer, captain of the air force and an astronaut at the European Space Agency since 2009. She will live on the space station for 6 months. She will study the earth from another prospective and carry out experiments in the fields of physics, medicine and, most of all, food and nutrition. All of this requires years and years of study and intense physical and psychological training.

So how does she prepare herself for blast off and life in orbit?
For the first time, in a total exclusive, a camera crew has followed an astronaut for almost a year. The Morol-Endemol team was present for the entire duration leading up to blast off. Together with Samantha, we went to NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston (USA), Star City – the former secret military facility – in Moscow (Russia), the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne (Germany), Italy and other centres where she followed the path which would take her into space. We accompanied her right up until her departure from the cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
In this exclusive, we filmed her simulator and survival training and we asked Samantha and other experts to describe every detail and peculiarity useful for surviving in space. We witnessed each and every phase of preparation necessary to transform Samantha into a “human being fit for space”.
We also took advantage of this long process to get to know her personally, her hobbies, her world, her traits and her day-to-day life during training.
This documentary on Samantha Cristoforetti entitled “The Woman of the Stars – Mission Futura” (La Donna delle Stelle-Missione Futura), produced by Morol, will air as a first-ever preview on Saturday November 22nd on Raitre at 22:00 as a “space” exclusive shown during the special “Fuori che tempo che fa – Futura” presented by Fabio Fazio.