Press conference for selection of ESA's Spacelab astronaut candidates held in Paris on 22 December 1977, with Roy Gibson, ESA Director General, and Michel Bignier, ESA Director of the Spacelab Programme. By the end of 1977, the candidates to be ESA's first astronauts had been reduced from over 2000 applicants to four, and these were named at this press conference as Ulf Merbold, Wubbo Ockels, Claude Nicollier and Franco Malerba.