Photographed by Arthur Elgort, Vogue, November 1998
Yesterday, celestial history was made when Italy’s first female astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, was launched into space aboard a Russian Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft that dropped her off, along with fellow astronauts Terry Virts (of NASA) and the Russian Federal Space Agency’sAnton Shkaplerov, at the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month mission.
Meanwhile, back in cyberspace, another historic launch is taking place today: Friends in Space, the first-ever social network for tracking and communicating with an astronaut. Developed by the Milan-and New York–based data visualization firm Accurat, the Web app will let you communicate with Cristoforetti (who goes by “Sam”) when she’s in orbit above your country and interact with all the other people who are trying to communicate with her around the world. Hers could be the face that launches a thousand tweets! (Good thing she happens to be fluent in Italian, English, German, French, and Russian.)
Space nerds will be excited to learn that the app will give you exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage chronicling Sam’s time on the ISS. If Sam throws down a version of Beyoncé’s “7/11” from outer space (shoulders sideways, legs moving side to side—it just makes sense), there’s a good chance it will go more viral than Chris Hadfield’s take on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” #WhoRunTheGalaxy