After a long selection, the European Space Agency has today unveiled the identity of its new astronauts. They are the first chosen since 2009, and on this occasion, ESA spread out its recruitment with 5 career astronauts, 11 reserve astronauts and 1 parastronaut.
Their career will begin with… a media tour.
Astronauts and suspense
ESA’s communication had wisely decided to place the conference and the presentation of its new astronauts at the end of the results of the ministerial meeting, a gathering which takes place every 3 years and which decides on the main orientations, but above all on the budgets. . A large audience of journalists therefore had to wait for the speeches and graphs of the financial distributions to be finished in order to finally be able to meet the new heads of European astronautics.
It should nevertheless be noted in the preamble that the candidates endured a final ordeal. Indeed, the 17 who were on stage in Paris did not seem to know whether they were being selected as career astronauts or reservists until they were called by the agency’s director, Josef Aschbacher.
Career or reserve?
For career astronauts, ESA is now their new employer. After a long series of interviews, they will leave for training for 18 months in Cologne, but also in France, the Netherlands and in the various centers of European astronautics, now recognized throughout the world as a center of ‘Excellency. They will then follow specific training for the missions assigned to them, not necessarily space ones. Remember that ESA participates in various studies in isolation, such as CAVES (in caves), but also under the sea, on volcanoes, etc.
Reserve astronauts have been selected for their profiles, which have a particular technical specificity. They may be called upon as needed for shorter training courses and unique missions (they do not, however, pursue a career at ESA).
5 new astronauts to welcome
The five new European astronauts are therefore:
- Sophie Adenot (France): She is a helicopter pilot for the Air Force, has an engineering degree and a Masters in Science from MIT, and she has been promoting science education for over about ten years;
- Pablo Alvarez Fernandez (Spain): he is an experienced engineer from Airbus Defense & Space, speaks Spanish, English, French and Polish, and worked in England on the ExoMars project, in collaboration with ESA and Roscosmos;
- Rosemary Coogan (United Kingdom): she has a double master’s degree in Physics and Astronomy, a doctorate in Astronomy, and speaks English, French and German. After a complex career, she worked at CNES in Paris on the Euclid mission before being selected;
- Raphael Liegeois (Belgium): he studied biomedicine before graduating as an engineer from the École centrale Paris, obtaining a master’s degree in fundamental physics at Paris Saclay and doing a thesis in neurosciences at the University of Liège. A little more surprising, he is an amateur balloon pilot;
- Marco Sieber (Switzerland): he is a former Swiss army commando, later became a doctor of medicine, with a specialty in emergency medicine and traumatology, then anesthesiologist. He has worked in a rescue helicopter and is a pilot, skydiver, paraglider and diver.
Considering the 7 astronauts already in post, we can note a will (whether implicit or not) of the ESA to have a quasi-parity between the nations which invest the most. The European corps now has two Germans, two Italians, two French, two English, a Dane, a Belgian, a Spaniard and a Swiss. Remember their names, we will soon see them again!
Other featured profiles
Englishman John McFall was selected as the only parastronaut. The program of the European agency indeed invited people with specific disabilities to participate in the selection. The objective is to show that with an adapted program and perhaps specialized equipment, these profiles are as valuable as the others for future selections.
The reservists, who one can imagine a little disappointed while on stage and who were not immediately introduced to the public (their names and profiles are on the agency’s website and in videos of presentation), are 11 in number. They too have diverse and very rich nationalities and backgrounds. They are Meganne Christian (UK), Anthea Comellini (Italy), Sara García Alonso (Spain), Andrea Patassa (Italy), Carmen Possnig (Austria), Arnaud Prost (France), Amelie Schoenenwald (Germany), Aleš Svoboda (Czech Republic), Sławosz Uznański (Poland), Marcus Wandt (Sweden) and Nicola Winter (Germany).
Source : ESA (YouTube)
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