Pablo Álvarez, an aeronautical engineer from León, graduated yesterday from the European Astronaut Center of the European Space Agency (ESA), in Cologne, and has become the third Spanish astronaut who could travel on a mission to space.
During these last two years, Álvarez has successfully completed basic training and training at the highest level of the ESA. “It has been an extraordinary journey of personal growth,” said the graduate, who has become the third Spaniard to graduate as an astronaut and be able to participate in a mission to space. Until then, only the Hispanic-American Miguel López-Alegría and former minister Pedro Duque had been able to do so. “As an ESA astronaut representing Spain, it is an honor to join pioneers like Duque,” Álvarez expressed to Diana Morant, Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, who did not want to miss the Leonese's graduation and took the opportunity to see the ESA facilities. THAT.
For his part, Josef Aschbacher, general director of the agency, wanted to congratulate the graduating astronauts and stressed that it was “a historic day for the European organization” that has eleven astronauts from eight member states, including Spain.
Pablo's dream began when he was little, "I was looking at the Moon when I was four or five years old in my small town in the mountains and someone told me that there were people who had walked on the Moon, but I was disappointed to hear that only twelve people had walked on the Moon." had done and I thought it had to be something more common,” explained Álvarez.
During the first course, Álvarez and his colleagues were part of a training program to learn basic notions about space exploration, such as simulating spacewalks, launch conditions and flight in zero gravity. In April of last year, she began basic physical fitness training with her Australian colleague Katherine Bennell-Pegg, who has also graduated with the class of 2022. At yesterday's event, Álvarez did not want to miss the opportunity to thank the more than 300 people who had helped them in their training.
From now on, the eleven new astronauts can now move on to the next phase of training prior to mission assignment, which consists of preparation training to fly to an orbital platform. The first graduate of the class will fly to space at the beginning of 2026. However, the Spanish astronaut ruled out, for the moment, being a candidate for the Artemis missions, the program run by NASA to explore the Moon. “Now we focus on preparing a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), which is already quite challenging,” said Álvarez.
Regarding his next purpose, the new astronaut stressed that “the most important thing is the scientific return,” so his dream mission would be one that would contribute to “finding a cure for some disease or improving the conditions of those who suffer from it.” ”, an idea that predominates in most of the experiments carried out from the ISS.
