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The European Space Agency has chosen an astronaut with a carnal disablement for the archetypal time, arsenic 1 of six caller trainees for abstraction missions
Space 23 November 2022By Alex Wilkins
New astronaut John McFall ESA - P. Sebirot
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced its newest astronauts, including the archetypal ever astronaut with a carnal disability.
John McFall, who is from the UK, had his close limb amputated aft a motorcycle mishap astatine property 19. He is simply a surgeon who has represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland arsenic a Paralympic sprinter.
The different astronauts are technologist and aviator Sophie Adenot from France, aerospace technologist Pablo Álvarez Fernández from Spain, astronomer Rosemary Coogan from the UK, biomedical technologist Raphaël Liégeois from Belgium and doc Marco Sieber from Switzerland.
“This enactment was astir endowment and astir capabilities to beryllium a fantastic astronaut, but I’m besides precise arrogant that it happens to beryllium a precise bully organisation of genders,” ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher said astatine a property league connected 23 November.
ESA besides announced the astronauts who volition participate its caller astronaut reserve, which is made up of radical who made it done the full enactment process, but weren’t chosen for full-time service.
After announcing past twelvemonth that it would beryllium selecting caller astronauts for the archetypal clip since 2008, ESA received much than 22,500 applications from 25 countries, 17,126 of which were from men and 5397 of which were from women.
There were 257 applications specifically for the relation of “parastronaut”, which ESA confined to radical with “lower limb deficiencies”. This was defined arsenic either a azygous oregon treble ft deficiency done the ankle oregon beneath the knee, a pronounced limb magnitude quality oregon a tallness beneath 130 centimetres.
The palmy astronauts had to marque it done six stages. After the archetypal screening, the archetypal radical of candidates went for a afloat time of intelligence show investigating to spot if they could header with the stresses of abstraction flight. This radical was past whittled down to conscionable implicit 400 people, who past went for much intelligence interviews and radical tests. Those who passed took aesculapian tests and, if they passed, were invited to a last circular of recruitment interviews.
The palmy applicants volition acquisition a year-long basal grooming people astatine ESA’s European Astronaut Centre successful Cologne, Germany.
When they person finished their training, they volition beryllium assigned to missions, including stays connected the International Space Station.
ESA has already selected astronauts for the Artemis ngo to the moon, successful which it is partnering with NASA, but if this is successful, the caller astronauts could articulation aboriginal satellite missions.
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