Steffan at envihab

Steffan Powell from BBC at envihab to prepare for space – at least for the virtual world of the new Mass Effect: Andromeda computer game.

ESA’s centre in Cologne, Germany, welcomed six European celebrities of the gaming world to put their gaming skills to the test on real astronaut training.

The budding astronauts go by such names as Squeezie, from France, Sep from the PietSmiet German collective, SciFun, from Poland, Jane of the Outside Xbox collective, TheGrefg from Spain, and Steffan Powell from the BBC, UK. 

The six reporters filmed and documented themselves piloting a simulated Soyuz spacecraft, making a ‘spacewalk’ in ESA’s pool and submitting to tilt tables, rotating chairs and vertical treadmills at the German aerospace centre’s ‘envihab’ facility. Not all the challenges were strenuous: the YouTubers and reporters were treated to space food developed for European astronauts.