Born in Ghent, Belgium, 25 April 1961. He is married and has three children. Enjoys football, small PC applications, gastronomy. In January 2000, Frank De Winne joined the European Astronaut Corps of the European Space Agency (ESA), whose homebase is the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany.
In August 2001, De Winne took up training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC), Star City, near Moscow. Training includes elements of Basic Training for the International Space Station as well as training as Soyuz board engineer.
He is now preparing for a flight to the ISS on the Taxi flight No. 4 scheduled for October 2002. He will serve as flight engineer on Soyuz TMA during ascend, and on Soyuz TM during reentry. This will be the first flight of the newly designed Soyuz TMA Spacecraft.
During his 8-day stay onboard ISS he will conduct an international science programme both in the Russian and American segment.