by John Kleiner

On April 24th, Samantha Cristoforetti, Italy's first female astronaut, took time off from her regular duties in the International Space Station to read from the Divine Comedy. She picked the opening canto of the Paradiso, in which Dante describes his ascent through the circle of fire and his approach toward God:

I was within the heaven that receives more of His light; and I saw things that he who from that height descends, forgets or can not speak.

As Cristoforetti spun around the globe at the rate of seventeen thousand miles an hour, her reading was beamed back to earth and shown in a movie theater in Florence.

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Source: http://www.newyorker.com/