As we wrote in April, ESA is looking for new European candidates to their astronaut training program. ESA asked all member countries to send applications for the upcoming training program. From Finland they will receive over 300 applications. This is the first time Finns have a change to become an astronaut and fly to the space.

ESA received 8.400 applications in total, and out of those thousands of applications only few will be picked up and given astronaut training. Most of the applications ESA received from Germany and France. I am really looking for to see someone from my home country entering the space. I did not apply

My dream might come true. ESA has announced that after their initial selection few Finns are still in the game. The process continues with a series of psychological tests, and those who pass the tests will continue with medical tests. Finally only four people out of 8.400 applicants will become ESA astronauts.

This is the first ESA candidate search since 1992. Those four new astronauts will fly to the International Space Station (ISS), but might also go to Moon one day.

Heh.. now my four years old son wants to become an astronaut..

Last weekend the Sojuz capsule was bringing back cosmonauts Juri Malatshenko, American Peggy Whitson and South-Korean Yi So Yeon. They had spent over half a year in the International Space Station (ISS).

For some reason the capsule entered the atmosphere in wrong angle. The heath protecting shield was in the backside of the capsule, and in fact the vehicle was coming down without heath protection. The capsule set on fire and finally landed far away from the planned landing site.

The most scared was South-Korean Yi So Yeon who saw the flames around the capsule. “I thought we will die burning, but because other stayed calm, I tried to look like everything is just fine“, says Yi So Yeon.

Virgin Galactic is soon going to start their space flight. According to Daily Mail, the first test flights will be done on next summer. They will take one just married couple to spend two hours in the altitude of 112 kilometers. The chosen couple will first get three-days training. According to Virgin Galactic, two couples have booked to a flight so far. One couple will get married in the space while the other couple will focus on their “celestial honeymoon”.

Well, I hope Virgin Galactic will not have as serious problems as the recently landed Sojuz capsule. I am very interested to see how the space flights will go. I am a bit afraid that Virgin Galactic will face serious problems just because they are the pioneers and pioneers usually have to solve the most difficult problems. Anyhow, it is great to see people flying to space. May be I will fly one day as well. I guess it would be a staggering experience.

Would you like to fly to space with Virgin Galactic?

European Space Agency (ESA) is recruiting new astronauts. Anyone can leave an open application to ESA and therefore has a change to fly to space one day. Last time ESA recruited astronauts was in 1992. The overall selection process will start on Monday 19 May. The selected candidated will be trained in European Astronaut Centre (ESA-EAC) in Cologne, Germany.

“We want to find high-calibre men and women in Europe to prepare to meet the challenges of ISS exploitation and human exploration of our solar system in the 21st century. As of May 2008, ESA will be searching in each of its 17 Member States for the best candidates to make this vision a reality”, says Michel Tognini, former astronaut and Head of the European Astronaut Centre.

Candidates from all 17 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) are welcome to apply. Although the application process is open, candidates from applying from small countries like Scandinavian and Eastern European countries will have little changes to become selected. The reason is that those small countries don’t usually take part into manned space flights and financing of the flights.

For example Finland’s space strategy has more weight in operations providing value to society, such as satellite communication. In the early 80’s Russia suggested Finland own kosmonaut training and free space flights, but Finland decided to decline due to political reasons (source Avaruus.Fi blog).