The European space agency ESA presented its new astronauts on Wednesday. The group is made up of two women and three men, including a Belgian. Also announced the first astronaut with a physical disability.
The new team will be training early next year to go to the ISS space station. In the future, they might even go to the moon.
The new Belgian astronaut is called Raphaël Liégeois and he 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 (United Kingdom, 1991) and Marco Sieber (Switzerland, 1989).
ESA also presented its first astronaut with a physical disability, the British John McFall (1981). He lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident at the age of nineteen. As an athlete, he has competed for the UK at the Paralympic Games.
It is not yet certain that he will go into space as a ‘parastronaut’. The project aims to see if space travel is possible and what needs to be done for it.
ESA announced last year that it was looking for new astronauts. The organization subsequently received 22,523 registrations, of which 982 were from the Netherlands. In addition, 257 people applied for the parastronaut position, including 13 from the Netherlands.
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