This Wednesday it became known that the European Space Agency (ESA) has not chosen the Portuguese as one of the five new career astronauts.
As part of a recruitment campaign launched in March 2021, ESA selected three men (from Spain, Belgium and Switzerland) and two women (from France and the UK).
The new astronauts include pilots, a doctor and a neuroscientist.
The new career astronauts, announced at a ceremony broadcast live from Paris, France, will begin a future spaceflight training program next year and join ESA’s current corps of seven astronauts from Italy (2), Germany (2 ). ), United Kingdom (1), Denmark (1) and France (1).
ESA has also selected an astronaut with a physical disability for the first time in a program that will serve to study conditions and technologies that guarantee safe missions for these people.
To participate in the recruitment campaign launched in 2021, more than ten years after the previous one, 320 Portuguese have submitted a valid application from over 22,000 of various nationalities.
ESA opened the new recruitment thinking about future missions to the Moon or even Mars and wanted to increase the number of women in space – the agency currently has an active astronaut, Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, who this year became the first European woman to command a spacecraft. International space station.
