{"id":200247,"date":"2022-11-24T14:21:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T06:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=200247"},"modified":"2022-11-24T14:21:19","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T06:21:19","slug":"european-space-agency-names-new-astronauts-agrees-record-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=200247","title":{"rendered":"European Space Agency names new astronauts, agrees record budget"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PARIS, Nov 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The European Space Agency announced five new career astronauts as well as history’s first astronaut recruit with a disability on Wednesday after adopting a record budget to fund its projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two female and three male career astronauts “will start working immediately,” ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher told a ministerial council meeting in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From more than 22,500 applicants, the agency chose France’s Sophie Adenot, Spain’s Pablo Alvarez Fernandez, Britain’s Rosemary Coogan, Belgium’s Raphael Liegeois and Switzerland’s Marco Sieber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new recruits start training next year and are not expected to blast off into space on a mission until 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will join the astronauts from the ESA’s previous 2009 astronaut class, which include Britain’s Timothy Peake and France’s Thomas Pesquet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is from that previous class that an astronaut will be selected to go to the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ESA also announced the first astronaut recruit with a physical disability, British doctor and Paralympian John McFall, who will join a separate “parastronaut feasibility programme”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 41-year-old’s right leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident at the age of 18. He became a sprinter, winning bronze at the 2008 Paralympics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It had been quite a whirlwind experience, given that as an amputee I’d never thought being an astronaut was a possibility,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ESA also established an astronaut reserve of six women and five men who passed the selection process and can be called up in future if needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new astronauts were named after two days of tough talks by ministers from the ESA’s 22 member states meeting in Paris to decide on the agency’s future funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They settled on a budget of 16.9 billion euros for the next three years, a 17-percent increase from the 14.5 billion euros agreed at the last ministerial council meeting in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aschbacher said the increased funds were necessary for Europe not to “miss the train” in the face of competition in space from the United States and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest contributors were Germany with 3.5 billion euros, France on 3.25 billion euros and Italy at 3.1 billion euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However the total committed remains far below NASA’s budget of $24 billion for 2022 alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earth observation programmes, which monitor climate change back on Earth, had a six percent funding increase to almost 2.7 billion euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robotic and human exploration’s budget jumped 36 percent to 2.7 billion, while telecommunications rose 19 percent to 1.9 billion euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The budget for rocket launcher systems was increased by a third to 2.8 billion euros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launchers, which were a subject of delicate negotiations, are crucial for Europe to be able send missions into space without outside help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ESA has struggled to get off the ground since Russia withdrew its Soyuz rockets earlier this year in response to European sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The job has been made more difficult by delays to its flagship Ariane 6 rocket, which was supposed to have its maiden flight in 2020 but will now blast off at the end of next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ESA has even had to resort to using the Falcon 9 rockets of its rival SpaceX to launch two upcoming scientific missions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The negotiations were given a boost on Tuesday when France, Germany and Italy announced their support for Ariane 6, the smaller Vega-C launcher and European-made micro and mini launch systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ExoMars mission, which has been left without a ride after Russia withdrew its rockets, will go ahead with US help, Aschbacher said. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"facebook<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"twitter<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"messenger<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"whatsapp<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"sharethis<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PARIS, Nov 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The European Space Agency announced five new career astronauts as well as history’s first astronaut recruit with a disability on Wednesday after adopting a record budget to fund its projects. The two female and three male career astronauts “will start working immediately,” ESA director-general Josef Aschbacher told a ministerial council […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":200249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,215,209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200247"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200247"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200251,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200247\/revisions\/200251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/200249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}