The European space agency ESA presented its newest astronaut on Wednesday. The group consisted of two women and three men, including a Belgian. The first astronaut with a physical disability was also announced.
The new team will be trained from early next year to go to the ISS space station. In the future, they could also go to the moon.
The new Belgian astronaut is named Raphaël Liégeois and was born in 1988. He could become the first Walloon in space. The others are Sophie Adenot (France, 1982), Pablo Álvarez Fernández (Spain, 1988), Rosemary Coogan (England, 1991) and Marco Sieber (Switzerland, 1989).
ESA also presented its first astronaut with a physical disability, British John McFall (1981). He lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at the age of nineteen. As an athlete, he competed for Great Britain at the Paralympic Games.
It is not certain that he will go into space as a ‘parastronaut’. This project is intended to see if space travel is possible and what needs to be done about it.
ESA announced last year that it was looking for a new astronaut. The organization subsequently received 22,523 registrations, including 982 from the Netherlands. Subsequently, 257 people applied for parachutist positions, including 13 Dutch people.
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