The first female Italian astronaut, Samantha Cristoforetti, is now 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station. Space enthusiasts and fans can now say hello to her using this nifty app.

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Saying hello to an astronaut on the orbiting space station is relatively easy. By just pressing a green button in an app called "Friends in Space," you can directly communicate with Cristoforetti. There's one catch, however. The ISS needs to be orbiting directly above your part of the planet for you to get in touch with her.

This web app made by Italian design studio Accurat allows users to track all Cristoforetti's orbits, including her past ones, current and even future ones. It also provides a visualization of her daily activity log and sends a live audio and video feed dirrctly from ISS.

It also functions as a social network where users can also say "Hi" to each other when Cristoforetti isn't in the user's area.

Conceived by co-founder and design director Giorgia Lupi, Friends in Space began when Lupi started corresponding with Cristoforetti on Twitter. Cristoforetti was already familiar with the studio's work and wanted to collaborate on a space app whose launch coincided with her first trip to space and the ISS.

To date, Cristoforetti has around 84,000 Twitter followers. She also updates her Google+ page ever so often with images from her training and daily life aboard the ISS.

Lupi says Cristoforetti is excited about an app that isn't scientific but is a reminder there are also humans in space talking to humans on Earth.

The ISS makes information about its lab experiments available to the public. Much of this data, however, tends to be complicated so the design team's goal was to make the app scientific yet "humanistic" at the same time.

Data from Cristoforetti's social feed is streamed on the app that also includes photos and videos provided by NASA.

Accurat also functions as a visual diary about an astronaut's life aboard the space station. The best thing about this app is every once in a while, a fuzzy radio conversation between astronauts will automatically be played on the user's speakers in real time. It's a peek into the astronauts' daily lives in microgravity as they hover above the Earth.

Gabrielle Rossi, co-founder and managing director of Accurat said the app gives people a chance to say "Hello" to astronauts in space while astronauts can say "Hello" to them, as well.

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