3.

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: ‘If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight.’

Albert Einstein, Kyoto Conference, 1922

Kennedy Space Center, Florida, 8 February 2010

‘T-9 minutes and counting,’ a voice comes over the loudspeaker. It’s only just past four in the morning, and the illuminated panel in front of the stands indicates that the countdown has started again after a planned hold. In front of us stretches a mirrored expanse of water, barely ruffled by a light breeze, but all eyes are trained beyond it, about 6 kilometres away, where powerful spotlights are washing over Launch Complex 39A. There, rising from the launchpad in all its glory, is the Space Shuttle Endeavour, and in its capacious cargo bay are two new modules for the International Space Station: Node 3 and the Cupola. They arrived last June from Turin and will go to complete that fabulous human outpost in space, continuously inhabited by astronauts for almost ten years. The Cupola, with its big windows, will offer them a breathtaking view of the Earth.

I look up somewhat worriedly at the sky, where starless patches betray the presence of clouds. I’m quivering with the desire to see my first space launch, but it may not take place tonight. The first attempt, yesterday, was postponed because of the clouds, and the odds of launching today are estimated to be 60 per cent. The Space Shuttle is an incredible machine, but also an extremely complex and demanding one. It’s not only the weather conditions here at Kennedy Space Center that must be favourable, but also those in at least one of the three emergency landing sites on the other side of the Atlantic. Knowing full well that a launch can be repeatedly delayed, I’ve given myself a good two-week margin. I have no intention of missing this launch, since I won’t have another chance to come to Florida during my basic astronaut training, and the Space Shuttle will complete its last mission in a few months.

My being here today is actually a very lucky circumstance. Right now, my colleagues are in St Petersburg for an intensive Russian course, which wasn’t considered necessary for me. After the first month of lessons in Germany, I asked to take the exam to certify my proficiency level, which was deemed more than sufficient to fly in a Russian space vehicle. As much as I cherish the dream of improving to the point where I can enjoy Dostoevsky in the original one day, a holiday in Florida for the launch of Endeavour was more enticing than a course in St Petersburg in February.

The Space Shuttle has been a constant presence in my world. I was four years old when Columbia made its maiden flight, and I well remember the pictures of the Challenger accident on television when I was nine. I was a teenager when, for the first time, a fellow Italian went into space, making it seem all the more possible that, one lucky day, it might be me. And it didn’t escape my attention when, a few years later, Colonel Eileen Collins became the first woman to serve as pilot, and then commander of the Space Shuttle. Unfortunately, my generation of astronauts won’t be able to fly in this exceptional vehicle before it’s retired from service. Until new American space capsules are developed, the only way of reaching the Space Station will be to fly in the Russian rocket Soyuz, and in the small spaceship of the same name.

The countdown resumes after a planned hold. Seven minutes from lift-off, the access bridge that allows the team to take their seats on Endeavour is retracted. The large external tank, bright orange, contains 800 tonnes of cryogenic propellants, liquid hydrogen and oxygen at very low temperatures. A small amount inevitably evaporates and is discharged through dedicated relief valves, creating the characteristic puffs of white vapour that shines in the lights on the launchpad. When the main engines are switched on, powerful turbopumps will funnel hydrogen and oxygen into the combustion chamber. But it’s the solid propellant boosters – those two huge, white, cigars on the sides of the external tank – that provide the first and most powerful push against Earth gravity.

I wonder what the six crew members are thinking right now, seated uncomfortably for hours in their orange spacesuits, their backs parallel with the ground. It’s the first mission for one of them, pilot Terry Virts. I can imagine he’s consumed with the desire to lift off.

At T-4 seconds, I watch as the main engines are lit. Lift-off isn’t yet inevitable: if one of the engines should fail to work properly, there would still be a way to halt the launch sequence. But not once the solid-propellant boosters are ignited as the countdown comes to an end and Endeavour, heedless of its 2,000-tonne weight, lifts off over Cape Canaveral in a sudden explosion of light so bright it turns night to day. Despite the distance, the noise is intense, and my whole body begins to vibrate with the sound waves. Enveloped by white vapour from the cooling water, the launchpad continues to radiate an intense glow, while the Shuttle climbs rapidly through the sky towards the northeast. It ascends through thin layers of cloud which, with the approach of Endeavour and its dazzling tail, emerge from the darkness in a play of light and shade worthy of Caravaggio – and are then swallowed up again by the blackness of night.

The boosters shut down after two minutes, as planned, and then drop off into the ocean, where they will be retrieved for refurbishment. The main engines continue to thrust Endeavour on in its race towards orbit. For nearly seven minutes I manage to follow it, a point that grows increasingly distant and imperceptible, until it disappears completely behind high and distant clouds. I couldn’t have wished for a more spectacular launch.

Fifteen years ago, when I was an exchange student in the United States for a year, I spent a week at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, not far from where I am now. We studied the Space Shuttle for fun, as much as we could in the short time available, and then we simulated a twenty-four-hour mission. And now, thinking of the Endeavour crew about to reach orbit, the images overlap with my memories of that experience.

I can’t imagine any better occasion than this spectacular launch for properly taking leave of that teenage Samantha. The time has come to move from the dream of being an astronaut – a brilliant, but vague dream – to the concrete reality of building an astronaut’s future. Or maybe this transition is just an illusion: maybe the beating heart of the child who yearned for space, maybe the dreamy gaze of the girl who lost herself in sci-fi adventures are still there. Maybe these aren’t only faint traces, but remain the mysterious source of my actions and feelings.

All of them – the child, the girl, the woman – are alive within me, the apprentice astronaut.

—

I couldn’t know that night that, only a few years from then, my own life would be inextricably intertwined with the life of the Space Shuttle pilot then making his first space mission. Nor could I have dreamed that the man standing next to me on the bleachers, whom I had only just been getting to know, would become my life’s companion.

For now, looking ahead, I could only see one certainty: the basic astronaut training, which, for the first time, was taking place in Europe. At the press conference in Paris the previous May, I had had the first opportunity to meet all together my five companions in this venture in one place. It’s where I got to know Tim, Alex and Thomas and met up again with Andy and Luca, whom I’d originally got to know during the medical exams. We were more or less the same age, and we were going to spend the fifteen months of the course together. Luca and I shared not only Italian nationality; we also both belonged to the Air Force. He’d joined up when he was much younger – right after high school, and during those months he was finishing the course as a test pilot for rotary-winged aircraft. Together we took part in another press conference the next day, in the crowded press room of Palazzo Chigi, seat of the Italian government.

In the weeks that followed, the Air Force received an unusual number of requests for interviews and public appearances. Their decision, at least initially, was to accommodate the media interest and try to satisfy it. It embarrassed me, but surprised no one, that attention was primarily focused on me, ‘the first Italian female astronaut’. While I found myself fielding questions that were often frivolous, along with expressions of admiration and astonishment that clashed with my sense of reality, Luca took things with his customary self-deprecating sense of humour. He’d often smile and introduce himself to journalists with the greeting, ‘Hi, I’m the other one!’

We hadn’t had any kind of press training, but one day ESA sent us some guidelines. I still remember four of them because even now I consider them the Golden Rules: never lose your cool; speak only about what you know; don’t discuss politics; don’t discuss your family or your private life.

They were simple rules based on common sense, but they were useful in terms of steering through that early summer maelstrom. At the time, I didn’t know yet how to separate myself from my media image or the public conversation of which I was the subject. And I wasn’t free to decide, to select or to request appropriate forms of collaboration as I am these days, most of the time. So I was very happy to use my saved holiday in order to retreat from the bewildering clamour of those weeks.

In view of my new ESA assignment, I needed to find accommodation, so I went to Cologne, where, for the first time in my life, I signed a rental contract for something more than just a furnished room. I chose a small apartment in Sülz, a pretty area on the left side of the Rhine only fifteen minutes by tram to the centre of the city and its famous Gothic cathedral. I moved in late one evening a few weeks later, having driven all the way from Italy. I had with me a few suitcases, a chair and a camping table, and my computer and printer. I arranged those few things in the living room, the only room with a working light bulb, and blew up an air mattress to sleep on.

Happiness always takes me by surprise, sneaking in unexpectedly, almost inexplicably. I think it must grow inside, slowly and quietly, until some small detail makes it spill over, and all at once it saturates body and soul. Or maybe it’s always there under your skin, waiting for you to make room for it. That night, I went to bed coddled by the expanse of clear sky I could see through the big windows in my living room. The full moon came out, haloed in silver – and suddenly I was happy.

On 1 September, we showed up at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) for the first day of school, curious and excited about our future training. I had visited EAC more than ten years earlier, when I was still studying aerospace engineering. The opportunity had been offered during the course on human spaceflight taught by the German astronaut Reinhold Ewald. I still have a photocopy of a cover article from a 1998 issue of Scientific American that Reinhold handed out to us at the time, and in which the American astronaut Shannon Lucid talked about her extraordinary experience: 188 days on the Russian Space Station MIR during the pioneering years of space collaboration between Russia and the United States.

I discovered that Reinhold’s office was now right across from mine at EAC. Or rather, ours, since I would share my office with Andy, a Danish aerospace engineer with a PhD and some years of experience working on offshore oil rigs in West Africa.

We wouldn’t be spending much time in our office over the fifteen months of basic training. From the very first day, we had a full schedule that usually kept us busy from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The initial four weeks were spent mostly on introductory lessons, some of them technical and many organizational: How does ESA function? What are its main programmes? How is astronaut training organized? In a classroom reserved for us, we watched thousands of PowerPoint slides. Some days our schedule included sports; on others we had to carve out time at lunch or the end of the day.

Although most lessons were not that demanding, the days were still very long. I sometimes managed to leave in time for a quick trip to IKEA on my route home before it closed. But there were days when I got home late to my apartment, where, in addition to furniture, I still lacked internet service, a washing machine and curtains. Despite this, I immediately felt at home in Cologne, a welcoming city that doesn’t take itself too seriously, so much so that Carnival season there goes on for three months.

The excitement of a spaceflight was some time away from those early days of sitting in lessons, but I continued to feel like Alice in Wonderland. EAC was a special place, a small centre with roughly 100 specialists from all over Europe, including Russia, who were dedicated to the support, training and medical care of astronauts. To my delight, I rediscovered the beauty of a multicultural environment – starting with the pleasure of hearing conversations in many different languages. The lessons, too, were becoming more interesting. A series of short, intensive courses began on various subjects – from biology to geology, information networks to crystal growth – each with a short final exam. The aim was to provide us with a kernel of knowledge in areas related to the technological and scientific aspects of spaceflight, so that we’d be able to communicate effectively with the scientists and technicians we’d be working with once we were assigned to a mission on the ISS, or International Space Station.

We knew very well that our finish line, the ISS, was still a long way off. In the best-case scenario, the first of us would go to space four years from then, and at worst, the last of us might have to wait for up to ten. We were six able and ambitious apprentice astronauts, and I had no doubt that all of us would complete the training with excellent results. The order in which we went into space would depend on the rotation of missions among the ESA member states and not on our proficiency. In a sense, this was a relief. We weren’t in competition and could dedicate ourselves unreservedly to the success of our group as a team.

We spent those first months in the little bubble of our raised classroom, which overlooked the large training hall dominated by a mock-up of Columbus, the European laboratory of the ISS. The mock-up was a full-scale replica of the module that is actually in orbit, a sort of large aluminium can measuring 4.5 metres in diameter and similar to many others, longer or shorter, that make up the Space Station. Each one can be an independent pressure vessel, with hull and hatches capable of maintaining an internal pressure equal to that found on Earth at sea level. In fact, the modules are linked and hatches are usually kept open to create a single internal volume of 930 cubic metres, similar to that of a large airliner. Sure, it isn’t completely habitable: the ‘furniture’ occupies much of the space. In the case of the ISS and specifically the non-Russian modules, this furniture is composed of ‘racks’, units similar to tall, narrow wardrobes, with a flat front, but a curved back that follows the cylindrical shape of the hull. These racks are distributed along the entire length of the modules, one next to another in such a way as to create an internal cabin with a square section that has ‘walls’, a ‘floor’ and a ‘ceiling’. Even with the racks, there’s a lot of free space: I could stand in the middle of the Columbus mock-up without being able to reach the side walls.

We apprentice astronauts waited with some trepidation for the moment when we could begin our lessons on Columbus. Immersed as we were in courses on the basics – and even as we enjoyed the subtle pleasure that comes from learning how things work, whether natural phenomena or products of human ingenuity – we felt we hadn’t yet entered the real world of training, the world inhabited by the astronauts assigned to the next Space Station crews – American, Russian, Canadian, Japanese or European colleagues we caught sight of every now and again from our classroom windows as they went to their classes in the mock-up. We couldn’t wait to leave our desks for the training hall, or the deep pool where we would later be taking a useful preparatory course on extravehicular activities, or EVAs. Often called ‘spacewalks’, a term that doesn’t do justice to the effort they require, these extravehicular activities are practised underwater, where it is possible to simulate some aspects of weightlessness, the condition of those who do not feel the effects of gravity.

We know it’s not possible to free ourselves from the force of gravity itself – certainly not on the surface of the Earth, nor in the Space Station, which orbits at an altitude of only 400 kilometres, a short distance that weakens the Earth’s gravitational pull by only about 10 per cent. Besides, gravity – at least as far as we’ve been able to observe, and according to our mathematical models – is only a force of attraction, without an equivalent force of repulsion to balance it. In other words, it cannot be shielded.

However, before our basic training ended, we’d have the experience of a few minutes of weightlessness under our belts: during a parabolic flight, we’d find ourselves floating inside an aeroplane cabin just like astronauts float around in the Space Station. In both, weightlessness is due to the condition of freefall, as in Albert Einstein’s famous lift: the occupant becomes weightless when the cable is cut, since she is falling with the same acceleration as the lift itself. If she were standing on the scales, they would inevitably register a weight equal to zero.

So if the ISS astronauts are in freefall, why don’t they ever crash onto Earth’s surface? Because they are moving at the dizzying speed of 28,000 kilometres per hour, or about 8 kilometres per second; their trajectory is constantly bent by the force of gravity of our planet, yes, but only just enough for it to follow the Earth’s curvature. They never fall to Earth, because they are condemned by their great speed to miss it; they are constantly falling around it. Just like the Moon, which is a thousand times farther away, but also compelled by Earth’s gravity to wander eternally around our planet.