This second edition of what was previously called In the Footsteps of Columbus continues where the first ends, telling the story of the ESA astronauts who have visited the International Space Station over its second decade and how they have lived on board, helped construct the space laboratory and performed valuable scientific experiments. The first edition covered the period from 2001 to 2012, detailing 18 missions from Umberto Guidoni’s STS-100 mission in 2001 to Andre Kuiper’s Promisse mission in 2012. This edition adds Luca Parmitano’s Volare mission in 2013 and concludes with Alexander Gerst’s mission, the second expedition commanded by an ESA astronaut, in 2018. The text covers all of the “class of 2009” astronauts as well as Parmitano and Gerst, Samantha Christoforetti of Italy, Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Timothy Peake, the UK’s first ESA astronaut, and Thomas Pesquet of France. Extensive use of color photographs from NASA and ESA depicting the experiments carried out, the phases of the ISS construction and the personal stories of the astronauts in space highlights the crucial European work on human spaceflight.While this added material covers a shorter period (6 years) and fewer missions (8 missions), in reality it nearly doubles the coverage of actual mission time in space (approximately 1,000 days). Overall, this edition encompasses over 2,000 days in space and 26 missions.  weiterlesen