ESA Astronaut Andre Kuipers

The Director General of ESA, Antonio Rodota (left), together with the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade, Gerrit Ybema, announced Europe's newest astronaut, Andre Kuipers (right), on 5 October 1998 at the Space Expo in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Kuipers, a medical doctor from Amsterdam and celebrating his 40th birthday that day, joined the other 12 astronauts who comprise the European corps. He will begin training around mid-1999 to qualify for future missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Kuipers is a specialist in space-related medical research. Since 1991, at ESTEC, he has participated in the preparation, data collection and ground control of physiological experiments developed by ESA for flight on the US Space Shuttle, the Russian Mir space station and, in the future, on the ISS. He also coordinates the life-science experiments for ESA's parabolic flight campaigns and participates as an experimenter, test subject and flight surgeon. Kuipers is the second Dutch astronaut. The first, Wubbo Ockels, was recruited in 1977 and flew on the Spacelab D-1 mission in 1985 on the US Space Shuttle. ESA is in the process of creating a single European astronaut corps by merging existing national astronaut programmes with the ESA programme. A number of new astronauts are also being selected. The goal is to have a total of 16 astronauts by mid-2000 in order to meet the demand for European astronauts as the ISS is assembled and onboard research begins. Before Kuipers, the European corps comprised 12 astronauts [Image Date: 05-10-98] [98.10.001-019]