We met Anthea Comellini during a break from her tour at the Politecnico di Milano to mark the 75th edition of IAC, the International Astronautical Congress: the foremost international conference dedicated to Space and Astronautics, organised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) in collaboration with the Italian Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIDAA), the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and Leonardo.

Thanks to a partnership with the ASI, six astronauts visited the Politecnico’s Wind Tunnel and drew a huge crowd of space-obsessed students, who peppered them with questions. In addition to Anthea Comellini, the event was attended by Franco Malerba, an Italian astronaut; Andrea Patassa, of the ESA Astronaut Reserve; Hazza Al Mansouri, an Emirati astronaut; and Sara Sabry, a Blue Origin astronaut.
An alumna of the Politecnico’s Department of Aerospace Science and Technology, 32-year-old Anthea – with her warm smile and magnificent head of curls – is originally from Chiari, in the province of Brescia, and was selected by the ESA as a reserve astronaut from a pool of 23,000 candidates. She explained exactly what this means and how she is training to prepare for a future mission. She also helped us to find out more about LEO, how you can seemingly hover around in a floating pool that simulates extravehicular spacewalks, and just how important it is for even astronauts to have expertise in medicine and photography. And how as long as you don’t have your head in the clouds, you can work one step at a time towards achieving incredible goals with a little determination and a lot of passion.
When did you realise that it was written in the stars for you to go to space?
I’d say that I’ve been fascinated by space – but also aeronautics – since I was very young indeed. So not only was I drawn to pioneers and explorers, but I also had this burning passion inside. I was always a huge fan of Star Wars, and then I watched Armageddon when I was a little girl, and the moment I saw the space shuttle on the launch pad, I felt my eyes glistening in awe – but at that point, I still thought it was fictional, something that only existed in the movies.
I was incredibly passionate about seeing the things that mankind was capable of creating, but I wasn’t exactly single-minded about it: I dreamed of being a writer, then a marine biologist, then, gradually, as I grew up and was introduced to new subjects, I realised that maths and physics were what I really had a talent for. When it came to choosing where to go to university, I was torn between going into the Accademia Aeronautica – the Italian Air Force Academy – or following a more technical and scientific path. And then I realised that I was better suited to learning how to build planes rather than how to fly them.
So how did you work to achieve this goal of yours – to get where you are today?
I got my head down, worked hard and took it one step at a time, always focusing on achieving the next goal: first, my exams, trying to keep my average grade high enough to qualify for scholarships, then my double degree in France, then finally choosing to pursue my master’s in Aeronautics. These were all conscious choices which developed based on the elements I had at the time, without ever getting too far ahead of myself.
What does it mean to be a ‘reserve’ astronaut like you are now, having beaten out all the competition? Only 17 out of 23,000 of you managed to pass the selection process, and you were the only Italian!
Essentially, the ESA announces a selection every 10 to 12 years. So the one they ran in 2022 was the first since 2009, as well as the first time that, in addition to hiring career astronauts – who immediately started their training when they were taken on by the ESA – they also recruited a group of 11 young reserve astronauts. By ‘reserve’, I don’t mean to say that we’re benchwarmers waiting for someone to drop out: it simply means that we have kept our jobs, so we are still able to continue advancing our careers, but in the meantime we’re also given training opportunities. For example, we are just about to start a six-month training course, which has been split into three two-month sessions. And then if the opportunity for a mission arises, that is when we are hired by the ESA on a fixed-term or permanent contract, depending on the type of mission we have been assigned to. At that point, we complete our training and carry out the mission.

Why have they chosen to take this approach?
Because the prospects for space exploration – especially in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) – are very bright, in that there are plenty of new commercial players coming onto the scene, as well as talk of new space stations and increased interest in doing research in microgravity. But at the same time, it’s all fraught with uncertainty. What will the future have in store after the ISS? Who will launch the first commercial space stations? What kind of capabilities to access space will we need? Because for the moment, only the US, Russia and China have access to space and we Europeans always have to hitch a ride with them, so maybe over the next few years, we might also manage to develop something for ourselves. But in light of all these uncertainties – and, at the same time, all these new opportunities – having a reserve team ensures that we can be ready if and when these opportunities arise, but also flexible enough to deal with these uncertainties.
So how are you preparing yourself at the moment? What’s on the cards for you over the next few years? If they could call on you at any given moment, how are you supposed to train?
You’re right, they really could call on me at any given moment: one of our Swedish colleagues from the reserve team, for example, has already done his first flight. They called him up, and in the space of just nine months, he completed his training and went out on a flight, so the whole thing can move very quickly as soon as the wheels are set in motion. Another colleague of ours, a Polish guy, is currently in training and set to be on a flight next year. So you really do have to be ready when they call you. And to help guide us through this process, the European Space Agency has set up these training programmes for us.
There are 17 of us in the class all in all: five are career astronauts and are already in training, then there’s a guy in the reserve team who is a para-astronaut, and they’re currently carrying out a study to determine whether it’s feasible – and above all, safe – for someone like him, who has a lower-limb disability, to carry out a space mission, and if so, what kind of adaptations need to be put in place.
What do these training courses consist of?
Some of them are more traditional classes or lectures, which can cover everything from the ISS and the European Space Agency’s programmes to biology and all the subjects you would need to conduct experiments in orbit. Because after all, the reason why we’re going to the International Space Station is to carry out experiments in microgravity on a wide array of subjects from biotechnology to materials science, cell growth to physics, so you really do need to have at least a basic grasp of all these different subjects so that you can interact with the experts back on Earth and carry out the experiments properly. Plus there are things you might never even consider, such as photography courses, because the ISS, for example, is a beautiful window onto the Earth and so when there are extreme atmospheric phenomena such as hurricanes, astronauts take photos that are then used by scientists and researchers, so they have to be able to take photos that are not only aesthetically appealing, but also useful in terms of the data they can provide.
Last but not least, we also do survival courses in the mountains and at sea, which are useful in the event that we ever have to do an emergency landing, as well as courses in the ESA’s Neutral Buoyancy Facility, which is a huge pool that is used to simulate extravehicular spacewalks, allowing astronauts a chance to practice how to move around in their spacesuits and operate outside their spacecraft, such as to carry out critical repairs or install equipment on the International Space Station.

Sara Sabry, Blue Origin astronaut. Anthea Comellini, ESA astronaut reserve
How do you balance being kept on standby – knowing that you might have to fly out in nine months – with having a private life of your own?
It actually all fits together wonderfully, because my day-to-day work – which I’m very passionate about – keeps me very busy. People often say that the best way to become an astronaut is to have a good plan B, but I’m actually finding that the best way is to have a good plan A, which isn’t becoming an astronaut, but rather finding a job that I love and am passionate about and pouring myself into that, because that also makes it easier to deal with the whole astronaut selection process without getting my hopes up too much.
What are you working on at the moment?
Right now, I’m working on a project called the LEO Cargo Return Service 2028: an ESA project that aims to develop a cargo spacecraft that can transport cargo up to LEO stations – right now, that largely means the ISS – as well as bring it back. The ultimate goal would be to create an inhabitable evolution of it, i.e. a craft capable of transporting a crew, so that we Europeans can develop this capability ourselves.
Where would you like to be offered a mission to: the ISS, the Moon, Mars…?
I don’t think that any of the active astronauts have ever had to consider this, in that we are still not sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them home, and Mars is much, much further away. Also, these are missions that would last at least a year and a half, so the psychological profile they’re looking for will be completely different compared to what they were looking for during this selection process. I’d have to answer this question from an engineering perspective, in that our first forays into space as rookies will be in low Earth orbit, and only if the opportunities arise in future could we maybe, potentially, become candidates for lunar missions, so for the moment, it would already be a great achievement to be assigned a mission in low Earth orbit.
What could you discover on a mission to the ISS that might be useful for us here on Earth?
A vast array of discoveries have already been made, even about how proteins and protein crystals develop. In weightlessness, physics works differently, so things might develop in 3D rather than in 2D, as they do when we try to replicate things in the lab on slides. They have already managed to discover things about our immune system, which changes entirely up there, as well as degenerative muscle diseases and cancer, as things evolve in three dimensions, so we can gain a better understanding of how cells replicate.
That said, it’s not just a matter of the discoveries they make, but also the tools that they develop to assist and protect astronauts’ lives when in orbit; the effects that astronauts experience in space are similar to those felt by people who are bedridden, so when we discover how we can improve astronauts’ health in space, that also becomes something we can replicate to help people who are bedridden.
There are also discoveries being made in terms of relationships and psychological profiles, about how we behave in isolation and new uses for medical instruments for remote sensing, such as carrying out ultrasounds remotely, so we can then use these in day-to-day life on Earth.

You’ve mentioned that the psychological profile is an important factor for any mission you go on, and that the requirements might be different for someone being sent to Mars. What characteristics does a good astronaut need to have?
First and foremost, you have to be very strongly motivated. Because it’s not enough to merely be driven by a desire to succeed: you have to understand what’s at stake in terms of humanity, society, the conquest of space. And you have to be aware that it’s a long journey, where the hardest part might not even be the training, but actually having to wait for something that could happen at any moment, and knowing how to handle all that physically and mentally.
There’s also a lot of talk about emotional stability, which is unsurprising given that you’re isolated, you can’t just go home if a problem arises, so you have to be able to manage stressful situations and all this isolation and the distance from your loved ones – as well as being a team player, of course, meaning that you can collaborate and work in groups, especially multicultural groups. Because on the International Space Station, there are anywhere from seven to eleven people, all of whom come from every corner of the world, with completely different backgrounds, but a single shared mission.
What advice would you give a young student interested in space who dreams of being in the position you’re in today?
I would say that the best advice I could possibly give is to simply follow your passions, regardless of what anyone else might tell you – even in good faith – to discourage you. If you follow your passion, then even if you find that you have a rocky road ahead of you, the satisfaction and happiness you get from travelling it will be so great that you won’t even remember all the obstacles you had to overcome, and what you manage to gain along the way will make all the hard work worth it.

Hazzaa Ali AlMansoori, Emirati astronaut; Sara Sabry, Blue Origin astronaut.