Getting to space
Easing from the grasp of Earth’s gravity is no easy feat. Humans dreamed of going to the stars for centuries, but it took until 1961 for Yuri Gagarin to become ...
Launched on Saturday 20 July – the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing – ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano returned to space for a second six-month mission to the International Space Station.
Throughout his mission Luca worked on over 200 experiments and technology demonstrations that will aid our next steps into space. He was an integral part of a series of spacewalks planned to service the anti-matter hunter AMS-02 and the first European astronaut to lead a spacewalk.
Launch: 20 July 2019 16:28 GMT
Launch site: Baikonur, Kazakhstan
Spacecraft: Soyuz MS-13
Expeditions: 60/61
Docking: 6 hours after launch at 22:47 GMT
Crewmates: NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov
Landing: 6 February 09:12 GMT
4
spacewalks
1
st Italian commander
60
/61 Expeditions
201
days in space
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Challenging spacewalks for Luca
Luca Parmitano
Luca Parmitano is an Italian ESA astronaut.
Beyond mission brochure English
Beyond mission brochure English
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Human and robotic research announcements
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The Soyuz spacecraft takes astronauts to space and acts as a lifeboat as well as returns them to Earth at the end of their mission on the International Space Station. The ride home is shorter than the ride up: less than four hours from undocking to landing in the steppe of Kazakhstan.
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International Space Station
The first module of the International Space Station was launched in 1998 and Expedition 1 arrived at the orbital outpost in 2000. Since then, humanity’s only permanent microgravity laboratory has been available to scientists from all over the world.
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