Hervé Stevenin
Hervé Stevenin was born 25 September 1962 in France. He leads ESA Neutral Buoyancy Facility Operations and the EVA Training Unit at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne (EAC), Germany.
Hervé is ESA’s spacewalk instructor for European astronauts and leads the team that develops and implements spacewalk training at EAC. He has more than 20 years’ experience in astronaut training and providing operational support for astronauts and has received extensive astronaut training himself. He has provided EVA training at EAC to the six European astronauts selected by ESA in 2009.
He is ESA’s Zero-G Instructor for European astronauts in parabolic flights and serves as Eurocom, the European Capcom that communicates from Columbus Control Centre with astronauts in orbit.
Hervé received spacewalk training in NASA’s EMU spacesuits at the Johnson Space Center and at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston in 2004.
This spacewalk training experience led to the development and implement of ESA’s unique EVA Pre-Familarisation, Proficiency Rebuilt & Recurrent Training course which is now part of ESA’s training for European astronauts.
In 2011, Hervé completed six weeks of EVA training and certification in the Russian Orlan spacesuit, at Star City, in Moscow with ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
He is currently the only “non-astronaut” European citizen with spacewalk training experience inside both NASA’s EMU spacesuit and the Russian Orlan.
Hervé applied to become an astronaut in Europe’s astronaut selection of 2009 and was one of the last 45 finalists out of 8413 astronaut applicants from 17 European countries.Hervé also served as Capcom and support diver the 16th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), with ESA astronaut Timothy Peake in the Aquanaut Crew simulating deep-space asteroid exploration off the coast of Key Largo, Florida in 2012.
In September 2013, Hervé and ESA astronaut Jean-François Clervoy slipped into the roles of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for an underwater simulation test of Apollo 11 moonwalk tasks, organised by COMEX off the coast of Marseilles, France. They tested a COMEX-designed prototype training-spacesuit based on the Orlan adapted to simulate Moon gravity.
Hervé Stevenin will serve as Aquanaut crew member on NEEMO 19 with ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen in September 2014.
Education and career
Hervé first graduated from the competitive French “classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles” at the lycée Descartes in Tours, France.
He then graduated from the Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-ENSMA & ISAE-SUPAERO) specialising in orbital and space mechanics.
He worked for 12 years at the French government space agency CNES as Spot system operations engineer for four years and as manager of the Crew Training and Operations for six years for three French missions to the MIR space station. He was a French Capcom in the Russian TSUP Control Center in Moscow for these three missions.
When he joined ESA and the European Astronaut Centre in 1999 as the Head of the Payload Training Unit in the Astronaut Training Division, he developed and implemented the first ESA Payload Training Programme at EAC for Space Station astronauts and was later trained and certified as Columbus Operator.
Since 2007, he leads the NBF Operations and spacewalk training at EAC.
In parallel, from 2007 to 2012 Hervé served as Eurocom Team Lead before becoming responsible for the Aircraft Piloting Training for ESA astronauts.
Hervé participated as astronaut instructor in many parabolic flights on the Caravelle Zero-G, the Airbus A300 Zero-G and NASA’s 930 (KC-135A). He has logged more than 800 parabolas in weightlessness experiencing almost five hours of weightlessness in total.
He served three times as member of the Search & Rescue Team in Kazakhstan for the spacecraft landing of European Astronauts.
Personal life
Hervé is a certified PADI Open Water Scuba & Enriched Air Instructor and an Emergency First Response Instructor logging more than 400 dives.
He has a Private Pilot Licence (EASA Part-FCL) and was certified in France for aerobatic flights in positive G. Hervé has skydiving experience and has logged 60 parachuting jumps.
Hervé is married and has one daughter.
