Luca Parmitano Quotes

Luca Parmitano — Italian Astronaut born on September 27, 1976,

Luca Parmitano is an Italian engineer and astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps for the European Space Agency. The astronauts work on missions at the International Space Station. He was selected as an ESA astronaut in May 2009. Parmitano is also a Major and pilot for the Italian Air Force. Parmitano is the youngest astronaut to undertake a long-duration mission, at 36 years and eight months old on the launch day of his mission... (wikipedia)

My memories of my childhood are wonderful memories. I feel that I was privileged because I grew up in a beautiful city. It is Catania, on the eastern coast of Sicily. It's a place filled with sun, close to the beach.

So one thing that I want to do is to make people realize that astronauts in general are very normal people. They are down to Earth, so to speak. I know it sounds contradictive, but we are very normal people. We are very normal people with a fantastic privilege and opportunity to do something that is extraordinary.

I grew up and I kind of took the road of becoming a pilot, which was another dream I had of flying, and once I did attend the air force academy, that dream of flying became more like a project, and I wanted to be a fighter pilot, which I did. I became a fighter pilot.

Is there any other job that beats being an astronaut? Who didn't want to be an astronaut? That is my question.

Being Italian, I have a very special relationship with the culinary arts. One my projects was to share Italian cultural food with my colleagues.