37 Dutch still in race to become astronauts

Twenty men and seventeen women from the Netherlands still have a chance to become astronauts. They have passed the first selection round of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Nearly a thousand Dutch people had registered. So almost 3.8 percent of them are through. Relatively speaking, only in Lithuania have more people lost weight. In Denmark, relatively most candidates survived the first selection; 14.5 percent is still in the running.

In total, 1,361 Europeans are still in the picture. They are 831 men and 530 women. The ESA released the figures by country on Thursday. France has the most irons in the fire, with 404 astronaut candidates. This is followed by Germany (194), the United Kingdom (166) and Italy (159). Hungary and Romania are the only countries where more women than men have a chance of being hired.

ISS

The ESA plans to reveal the names of the new astronauts in October. They will go to the International Space Station, and maybe someday to a new space station around the moon.

In the previous selection round, in 2008, there were a total of 8413 applications. Among them were more than 200 Dutch. Six people passed the selection and were hired: an Italian and an Italian, a German, a British, a French and a Dane. They have all gone to the International Space Station in recent years. In the round before that, in 1998, the Dutchman André Kuipers was hired.

Mild physical disability

The ESA is also looking for astronauts with mild physical disabilities. This concerns, for example, people whose one leg is considerably shorter than the other, people who are missing a lower leg and people who are shorter than 1.30 metres. They can become ‘para astronaut’. There were 257 registrations from that group, including 13 Dutch people. Of the 257, 27 are still in the race. It is not known whether among them are also Dutch.

So far, four native Dutch have been in space. Lodewijk van den Berg from Sluiskil in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen was the first in early 1985. He made his space flight after being naturalized as an American. At the end of 1985, Wubbo Ockels was the first Dutch citizen to orbit the Earth. Van den Berg and Ockels both flew in the space shuttle Challenger. André Kuipers is the most experienced Dutch astronaut. He went to the ISS space station for a week and a half in April 2004. He also stayed there from December 2011 to July 2012. The then 18-year-old Oliver Daemen from Oisterwijk just left the atmosphere last year, as a tourist on a commercial flight.