Italy's first female astronaut Samanta Cristoforetti was on Thursday due to visit a refugee centre on the tiny southernmost island of Lampedusa together with top Unicef official Paolo Rozera.
Cristoforetti, a Unicef ambassador and the woman who completed the longest single space flight, was slated to meet Lampedusa's mayor Giusi Nicolini - an outspoken defender of migrants' rights.
Cristoforetti and Rozera were due to visit Lampedusa's migrant identification centre- the only 'Hotspot' opened so far in Italy to accelerate the identification and relocation of asylum-seekers across Europe.
"The visit will help us come up with solutions to face the [migration] emergency," Rozera said, ahead of his and Cristoforetti's visit.
Together with Greece's island of Lesbos, Lampedusa is the main arrival point for hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees sailing from the coasts of Libya and Turkey.
In a gesture of solidarity, Pope Francis picked the island for his first papal trip in 2013 and prayed there for an estimated 20,000 migrants and refugees who drowned trying to reach Italy in the past 20 years.
