Walter Villadei is pilot of Axiom Mission 3.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday spoke to Rome astronaut Walter Villadei by way of stay video hyperlink between the Colosseum and the Worldwide Area Station.
Villadei is serving because the pilot within the Axiom Area (Ax-3) mission – a collorabation between Axiom Area, SpaceX and NASA – which lifted off on 18 January.
“I’m delighted to be on board with you, albeit nearly” – Meloni advised the Italian air pressure colonel – “As I think about you possibly can see, we’re linked from the Colosseum, one of the crucial extraordinary symbols of our id and our millenary historical past.”
Colosseo, collegamento con @WalterVilladei, Colonnello dell’@ItalianAirForce impegnato nella Missione Spaziale #Ax3 Voluntas. https://t.co/SEUYoIErNh
— Giorgia Meloni (@GiorgiaMeloni) January 25, 2024
Meloni chatted to Villadei for 1 / 4 of an hour, telling him that Italy is “rooting for him” and expressing the hope that as a nation “we will at all times do extra, at all times transfer ahead, proceed with the keenness with which you might be speaking to us and never think about that there should be pre-established limits”.
Meloni stated she was additionally “significantly proud” that the Ax-3 astronauts are consuming Italian meals in area, thanking Villadei for agreeing “to be an envoy for the candidacy of Italian delicacies as a UNESCO intangible heritage web site.”
Villadei, 49, is a part of the four-person crew on the Ax-3 mission together with Spanish commander Michael López-AlegrÃa, Turkey’s Alper Gezeravcı and Sweden’s Marcus Wandt.
Throughout their two-week mission, the astronauts will perform roughly 30 experiments aboard the ISS earlier than returning to Earth on 3 February.
