The European Space Agency (ESA) has added five new astronauts to its corps, bringing the total to 11. The five newcomers, who graduated from basic training on Monday in Cologne, Germany, are:
– Sophie Adenot, a French air force helicopter test pilot
– Pablo Alvarez Fernandez, a Spanish aeronautical engineer
– Rosemary Coogan, a British astronomer
– Raphael Liegeois, a Belgian biomedical engineer and neuroscientist
– Marco Alain Sieber, a Swiss emergency physician
Katherine Bennell-Pegg from Australia also underwent training under a cooperation agreement between Australia and ESA but remains an employee of the Australian Space Agency.
The new astronauts have undergone a year of intensive training that included:
– Exposure to high gravity forces in a centrifuge
– Underwater simulated spacewalks
– Hypoxia training
– Survival training
– Academic work on scientific topics and space station systems
– Intensive Russian language training
ESA has negotiated with NASA for three places on future Artemis moon missions but expects those places to go to more senior astronauts. The agency is also supplying the service module for the Orion crew capsule.
The new astronauts join an elite group of individuals who have dedicated their lives to space exploration. They will now undergo additional training before being assigned to their first missions.
