New ESA Astronauts Finally Announced! FIRST AUSTRIAN WOMAN Could Fly To Space

Hello everybody, and welcome! We have new European astronauts. This week at the ESA Council at Ministerial level, the astronaut class of 2022 was revealed after more than one year long process. Out of more than 22.500 applicants, 17 people in total were chosen. Which is more than I had expected to be honest, but only 5 of this group were selected as career astronauts, meaning they will start training and will be put on missions right away. If I understood the presentation correctly, the decision who these 5 people will be was made on very short notice before the announcement. So, what will happen to the rest of the group? One of them is the so-called para-astronaut, taking part in a feasibility study for astronauts with physical disabilities. For this position, ESA has selected John McFall from the UK, born 1981, who had lost his right leg due to a motorcycle accident when he was 19. He went on to train as a Paralympic athlete and even won the bronze medal in the men's 100m run at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing. Afterwards, he went on to study medicine and will now help ESA get people with disabilities like him into space. The other 11 are members of the newly created Astronaut Reserve. This means that they will return to their lives and careers, but they could be called upon at any time in the future should ESA require their services. More on that a little later. Because first, I want to highlight the 5 career astronauts. They are Sophie Adenot from France, born 1982, an MIT graduate and pilot with 3000 hours on 22 different helicopters. She also did several rescue flights in hostile environments. This is definitely someone you want in the cockpit during a critical mission. Pablo Alvarez Fernandez from Spain, born 1988, an aeronautical and aerospace engineer who had worked on the ExoMars rover. Rosemary Coogan from the Northern Ireland part of the UK, born 1991, an astrophysicist who already analysed data from the James Webb Space Telescope for the French space agency CNES. She had a fun little slip up during the presentation of the new astronauts when she said she's European, but from the UK, which caused some laughter from the otherwise rather somber crowd. Raphael Liegeois from Belgium, born 1988, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist. And finally, Marco Sieber from Switzerland, born 1989, a paratrooper, pilot and medical doctor. These 5 get ESA employment contracts and will start training at the beginning of next year and will then be specializing for their respective missions as soon as those are known. They will work and train alongside the class of 2009 who were also present there for the announcement. The 11 reserve astronauts will not be employed by ESA, but they are nevertheless regarded as full astronauts as ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher pointed out repeatedly during the announcement. And they will be required to be at the European Astronauts Center for tests at least once a year so they don't lose their status. What makes me very happy on a personal level is that with Carmen Posnick we now have an Austrian in the astronaut reserve. She could be the first Austrian woman to go to space in the next years and like the career astronauts her resume reads fantastic. The 33 year old studied medicine and is currently working on her PhD. She spent 13 months in Antarctica where she got to experience living in isolation so I would assume living aboard the ISS would come natural to her. Carmen Posnick would be the second person from Austria to go to space ever with Franz Fieberg being the first who flew to the Soviet space station Mir in 1991. However he never was part of ESA's astronaut corps. I really do hope there will be opportunities for the reserve astronauts to fly to space one day. But we have to be realistic. The ISS doesn't have that many years ahead of itself and there won't be that many Artemis missions to the moon with European participation. And no crewed mission to Mars will be launching within the next 15 to 20 years if we're being real. So for now the 11 reserve astronauts will likely remain just a backdrop Eurogay press conference to create an image of Europe as a space power. Okay that sounded a lot more cynical than I really feel about this and no I'm not just jealous because ESA rejected my application for the astronaut position. After looking at everyone's resume and I really recommend you look at each and every one of them they're really interesting. I realized that I had no business even trying to be part of that group as much as I wanted it and still want it. So if you're still young and want to go to space one day my recommendation to you is to do something along these lines. Get a degree in a STEM field that interests you. Ideally get multiple and write your thesis on something space related. Then do a stint in Antarctica or participate in some kind of harsh environmental expedition. Work on space related projects. Be a pilot. Any combination of these will get you closer to being selected as a potential astronaut if you're lucky enough to be born in a year where you might be eligible. But that's for the future. Who knows when ESA will do another round of astronaut applications. Probably not within the next 10 years. For now I can't wait to see our new European astronauts take to the stars soon. If you enjoyed this video please subscribe to my channel for more and follow me on my social thingies. The links are in the description. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.