Cristoforetti to document her mission to International Space Station on TikTok.

Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is preparing to take the social media platform Tiktok to space, inviting people to follow her "to boldly go where no TikToker has gone before!"

Cristoforetti, popularly known in Italy as AstroSam, will join three other crew members on the Minerva mission to the International Space Station (ISS), with lift-off scheduled from the NASA Kenney Space Center in Florida on 27 April at 09.52 Italian time.

An astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), Cristoforetti will be launched into orbit on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with three NASA astronauts: Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins.

Cristoforetti, 44, holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut (199 days, 16 hours) from her mission to the ISS in 2014.

Introducing #Crew4 – now on #TikTok! I hope you enjoy this new channel. Don’t forget to let me know in the comments what you’d like to see next. #MissionMinerva @TikTok_it @esa pic.twitter.com/226ao5wu8r

— Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) April 13, 2022

The Milan-born astronaut - Italy's first woman in space - chose the name Minerva for her latest mission, in reference to the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom.

As part of the mission she will carry out experiments and research on the effects of micro-gravity on ovarian cells, which in the future could lead to new medical treatments to combat cancer.

On her last mission in 2014 Cristoforetti became the first astronaut to brew espresso in space.

This time she is taking olive oil to the ISS, to see how the quality of the oil changes in space and also because it gives flavour "even to the rehydrated salads that we eat up here.”

Photo Samantha Cristoforetti (NASA/Robert Markowitz)