February 5, 2026— In February 2015, thirteen-year-old Elena Selmi of the Locatelli-Oriani secondary school in Milan, Italy, had an other-worldly experience, one that stuck with her. 

Then 13-year-old Elena with ARISS Technical Mentor Gianpietro during the 2015 pass

Elena was the first student to ask a question of ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti during a pre-arranged ARISS contact with the ISS. Our volunteers in Milan, Micol Ivancic (IU2LXR) and Gianpietro Ferrario (IZ2GOJ) were the ARISS Educator (who worked with this school on STEM lessons prior to their ARISS contact) and the ARISS Technical Mentor for the contact, respectively.

​Recently, Elena reached out to Cristoforetti to let her know how much just one question and answer—lasting less than one minute—changed her life.

Ciao Samantha!
You probably won’t remember, but in February 2015, during your first mission on the ISS, you contacted two schools in Milan via the ARISS-AMSAT amateur radio initiative… and wished a happy birthday to a little girl named Elena. I’m writing to you because I wanted to tell you that little girl is me!

I graduated from Oxford with a degree in astrophysics and particle physics last summer, and now I work at ESA! I’m the youngest staff member (as YGT) at ESAC in Spain, and I think at the entire agency; I’m part of the BepiColombo mission, which will arrive at Mercury in September. Next week will be the 11th anniversary of that birthday (I’m turning 24!), and for the first time I told this story to my team. I’ve always kept it very close—it’s one of the fondest memories I have—but my managers suggested I try contacting you on Teams.

If you see this message, I just wanted to say THANK YOU! Maybe you’ll be happy to know that something so small had such a big impact.

11 years after her contact, astrophysicist Elena Selmi at her ESA job; Samantha Cristoforetti in the ISS cupola

Cristoforetti did see the message and reached out to ARISS–and we both congratulate Elena on her “mission” success! We look forward to having the same effect on the thousands of students we connect with the ISS and increasingly, with human commercial space vehicles around the earth and on the way to the moon and mars.

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