ESA Astronaut Paolo Nespoli official handover of Cork and CIT flags which travelled to the ISS
Published on: Thursday, 26 July 2018
ESA Astronaut Paolo Nespoli visited Cork on July 23rd to officially handover the Cork and CIT flags which travelled to the International Space Station as part of the International Space University’s Space Studies Programme SSP17 hosted by CIT last Summer. The flags were flown aboard the ISS during Expedition 52/53, launched on the Soyuz MS-05 on 27th July 2017 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and returned to Earth on 14th December 2017 after 139 days in space.
The Official Handover took take place in the Curtis Auditorium at the CIT Cork School of Music and was followed by a Public Lecture by Astronaut Nespoli entitled “In Space for Earth”.
The photos show the Cork Flag being presented to the Lord Mayor Cllr Mick Finn and the County Mayor Cllr Patrick Gerard Murphy and the CIT Flag was presented to President Dr Barry O’Connor, by Astronaut Paolo Nespoli who took both flags to the ISS as part of the International Space University’s Space Studies Programme SSP17 hosted by CIT last Summer. Other photos show the President of ISU Prof Walter Peeters giving an insightful talk about the Astronaut Programme and Astronaut Nespoli enthralling the audience of close to 280 people with his down to earth and very human talk on his missions in space.
