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Emily Lakdawalla • Jun 15, 2015

Welcome home, AstroSamantha

Three astronauts have returned to Earth, and while I'm happy that they landed safely, I'm very sad that astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is not in space anymore. She is a nerd after my own heart, tweeting such science fiction influenced gems as

I mean, seriously, check out her T-shirt.

I mean, dude, check out her T-shirt. She is the goddess of T-shirts.

She didn't just fool around in space, of course; she did plenty of science while she was up there.

And an astronaut has a lot of much less glamorous work to do.

But clearly posting to Twitter is something that she did on her downtime, often as she was headed to bed. She had a keen eye for striking imagery, near or far, and a piquant turn of phrase -- I imagine this was even better in Italian. All of these images were taken in the last month; you must check out her Twitter media feed for her photography and comments spanning the 200 days she spent in space.

Cristoforetti annotated images of her return to Earth with her characteristic spirit:

So dear Samantha: I'm glad you made it home safely; but I am very sorry you're not in space anymore to wish us "Buona notte dallo spazio." I hope you get to go back someday so we can see Earth -- and maybe places beyond -- through your eyes.

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