ESA ASTRONAUTS PREPARE FOR EUROMIR

In anticipation of a European involvement in a future Manned In-orbit Infrastructure, flight opportunities for the members of the European A stronauts Corps had to be found in the context of cooperative missions with other parties. With this approach in mind, the profile and selec tion criteria for the new group of European astronauts, recruited in 1 992, was tailored both to short-duration Space-Shuttle missions and to long-duration missions onboard the Mir station.After introductory tra ining at EAC, two of the Candidate Astronauts recruited by the Agency in 1992 joined that year's US Class for Mission Specialists, while the others continued with Basic Training at EAC. Also in 1992, a contract was signed between EAC and the Russian training centre for cosmonauts , ZPK, also known as 'Star City'. In the meantime, cooperation with th e Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been strengthened still further and two flights aboard Mir for European Astronauts have been arranged in the context of the Columbus Precursor Flights programme. T he contract with NPO Energia for these two Mir flights, known as EuroM ir 94 and EuroMir 95, was signed in July 1993. The technical objective s of these EuroMir missions were described in detail in a previous art icle in ESA Bulletin No. 75. This article focusses on the astronaut-r elated aspects of these flights.