Samantha Cristoforetti, IZ0UDF back on Earth June 11, 2015

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti IZ0UDF along with Anton Shkaplerov and Terry Virts landed safely on Thursday, June 11 in Kazakhstan after a three-hour ride in their Soyuz spacecraft. They left the International Space Station (ISS) at 1020 UT in a Soyuz TMA-15M landing by parachute on the Kazakh steppe at 1344 UT.

Samantha Cristoforetti IZ0UDF with ISS HamTV Transmitter

Samantha is the seventh ESA astronaut and the first female ESA astronaut to complete a long-duration mission in space. She set new records for longest single time in space for an ESA astronaut and female astronauts in general.

She set a new record for single mission duration by a female astronaut with 199 days in space on her first flight, surpassing the previous record of 195 days set by Sunita Williams KD5PLB as a flight engineer on Expeditions 14 and 15 from December 2006 to June 2007.

Samantha carried out a number of ARISS amateur radio school contacts and was involved in the Blank Test Transmissions from the new ISS HamTV digital television system on 2395 MHz which were received by radio amateurs around the world.

Take a Panoramic Tour of the ISS Columbus Module, look out for the HamTV transmitter
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station/Highlights/International_Space_Station_panoramic_tour

Anatoly Zak http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuz_tma15m.html#landing
ESA http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Futura/ESA_astronaut_Samantha_Cristoforetti_back_on_Earth
NASA http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/expedition-43-crew-departs-space-station-lands-safely-in-kazakhstan

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) http://ariss.org/