In particular, this arm has 7 degrees-of-freedom that makes the overall motion of the arm very complex so that, before you start driving the arm, you should be very familiar with all the position it can get.

At that point, there will be the handover between the shuttle arm and the station arm so that the shuttle arm will take the cradle and put it into the cargo bay.

And since Italy was involved in the space station as well as signed an agreement with NASA. And when the possibility to enter the 1996 Mission Specialist class.

And then I graduate two years later, in 1998, with my class. And, since then I've been here in Houston for training basically. And I was very happy to be assigned to this mission.

I remember; I was 15 years old when Neil Armstrong put feet in the moon.

For the first time in history all the major countries in the world are pushing together to reach this goal... building something in space that is really for all humankind.

During that space walk there will be some repositioning of the power so that the arm can be fully controlled by the robotic station that is in the Lab.