The European Astronaut Centre (EAC) (German: Europäisches Astronautenzentrum, French: Centre des astronautes européens), is an establishment of the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

and home of the

European Astronaut Corps The European Astronaut Corps is a unit of the European Space Agency (ESA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members on U.S. and Russian space missions. The corps has 13 active members, able to serve on the International Space St ...

. It is near to

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

, Germany, and is subdivided into six separate arms, these being Astronaut Training, Space Medicine, Astronaut Management, Human Exploration of the Moon as part of the Spaceship EAC initiative and Communications. It provides training facilities for European and international partner astronauts (including a

neutral buoyancy pool A neutral buoyancy pool or neutral buoyancy tank is a pool of water in which neutral buoyancy is used to train astronauts for extravehicular activity and the development of procedures. These pools began to be used in the 1960s and were initially ...

), particularly regarding ESA hardware for the

ISS The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (J ...

such as

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

and formerly the ATV. The overall European Astronaut Centre organisation is also in charge of the organisation of the training of European astronauts in the centers of other partners, such as the United States (

NASA Johnson Space Center The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) is NASA's center for human spaceflight (originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center), where human spaceflight training, research, and flight control are conducted. It was renamed in honor of the late U ...

), Russia ( Star City), Canada ( Saint-Hubert) or Japan (

Tsukuba is a city located in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 244,528 in 108,669 households and a population density of 862 persons per km². The percentage of the population aged over 65 was 20.3%. The total ar ...

). The Medical Operations arm (the Crew Medical Support Office) concentrates on providing health related support to the European astronauts and their families. Astronaut management supports and directs the careers and mission placements of the astronauts, and Education and PR are involved in activities related to education and outreach and the appropriate representation of the European astronauts and their space activities to the public.

References

External links

ESA EAC site

ESA page with information about EAC

ESA Astronauts blog
* European Space Agency Space technology research institutes Neutral buoyancy pools Organisations based in Cologne Porz {{ESA-stub

See also

References

External links