First Crew - Captain Samantha Cristoforetti

My next selection for the first crew to Mars is Captain Samantha Cristoforetti, Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer who holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours).

Samanthas personal achievements and ongoing education place her high on the list of persons having what it takes to qualify for a crewed Mars mission. At the age of 18, Samantha took an AFS exchange program to the US and attended Space Camp that year.

A highly educate individual, Samantah has studied in France, Russia and Italy and also graduated in Aeronautics Sciences (University 'Federico II', Naples) and at the Accademia Aeronautica in Pozzuoli, becoming one of the first women to be a lieutenant and fighter pilot in the Italian Air Force logging over 500 hours in six types of military aircraft.

Samantha’s in-space experience includes a long-duration mission to the ISS in 2014, and she was awarded the Order of Merit , the highest ranking honour of Italy. She is currently assigned to fly to the International Space Station a second time in spring 2022 which is the 4th mission of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, SpaceX Crew-4 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft

Samantha has also commanded a NEEMO mission in 2019 testing technologies and objectives for deep space mission and lunar explorations on the seafloor.

She can speak Italian, English, German, French, and Russian, and she is currently studying Chinese and has authored a book, Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut - by Samantha Cristoforetti in 2020 and in December 2021, Politico Europe named her as one of the "dreamers" in its annual list of the 28 most influential people in Europe.

Highly educated, multilingual, published author, experienced astronaut and pilot, Samantha would be a good addition to the first mission.

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