ESA Announces 6 New Astronauts

ESA has just announced its six newest astronauts: Samantha Cristoforetti (Italy), Alexander Gerst (Germany), Andreas Mogensen (The Netherlands), Luca Parmitano (Italy), Timothy Peake (UK), and Thomas Pesquet (France) (Mrs. Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight also show in center of photo below). They're the first European astronauts selected since 1992 to the European Astronaut Corps. Note that the selectivity is 6 out of 8413 applicants = 0.071%, not 0.048% as I previously estimated. Congratulations!



Hopefully, NASA's announcement is imminent.

Comments

DW said…
It would seem that they may tend to go with a slightly younger crowd than the US does. Your thoughts on their selection? Thanks again for all your posts. I usually check once a day.

Dan
21 May, 2009 14:27
BrianShiro said…
Dan, that's an interesting observation. Their ages are 31, 31, 32, 33, 37, and 30. With an average age of 32.3, the new ESA astronauts will probably be younger than NASA's, which tends to have an average in the late 30s. Perhaps this is a function of the infrequency of Europe's astronaut selection. Maybe by signing them up young, ESA can keep them longer.
21 May, 2009 14:38
PillowNaut said…
Whenever I read an astronaut bio, i wonder what the heck i've been doing with my time?? ;) this is exciting... can't wait to see NASA's new picks next.
29 May, 2009 11:03
Anonymous said…
what happened to your link on the new NASA astronaut announcement? It was up for less than a day!
31 May, 2009 06:37
BrianShiro said…
Anonymous, I took it down out of respect for one of the sources of that "rumor." The person felt uncomfortable with it being online for some reason.
31 May, 2009 09:15
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