You're listening to the BBC World Service Space Podcast.

We're going to tell you how to live, work, play and fight at the final frontier,

as well as saluting some of history's space pioneers.

Happy listening.

Station Houston on two. Are you ready for the event?

Right now at least three members of the human race are not on Earth because they are living and working in space.

Yeah, the sun is flashing off the solar rays and looks like it's winking at it. It's pretty neat.

I'm European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Christo Ferreti.

And until recently I was leaving 400 kilometers above our planet, traveling in orbit at more

than 27,000 kilometers per hour.

I'm on two for a dragon.

Capture is complete.

Go for past capture, reconfiguration.

I'm back on Earth now at the European Astronets Center in Cologne, Germany.

In a home in space, here on the BBC World Service, I'll be telling the story of the

ISS, the International Space Station, a multinational, multilingual project that was first

conceived more than 40 years ago. I'll be talking about life on board, the science on the

space station and its future.

I'll also be asking whether our outpost in orbit has helped bring

countries on Earth closer together.

Soon, I'll be able to look into the night sky and see our work up there with the big dipper, the moon and the stars.

Back in the late 1990s, the American Space Agency, NASA, was confident that the International

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