Luca Parmitano
Luca Parmitano
Luca Parmitanois an Italian engineer and astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps for the European Space Agency. The astronauts work on missions at the International Space Station. He was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009. Parmitano is also a Major and pilot for the Italian Air Force. Parmitano is the youngest astronaut to undertake a long-duration mission, at 36 years and eight months old on the launch day of his mission...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth27 September 1976
CountryItaly
I grew up and I kind of took the road of becoming a pilot, which was another dream I had of flying, and once I did attend the air force academy, that dream of flying became more like a project, and I wanted to be a fighter pilot, which I did. I became a fighter pilot.
So one thing that I want to do is to make people realize that astronauts in general are very normal people. They are down to Earth, so to speak. I know it sounds contradictive, but we are very normal people. We are very normal people with a fantastic privilege and opportunity to do something that is extraordinary.
Is there any other job that beats being an astronaut? Who didn't want to be an astronaut? That is my question.
Being Italian, I have a very special relationship with the culinary arts. One my projects was to share Italian cultural food with my colleagues.
It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk.