The European Space Agency hopes to hire and launch the world’s first physically disabled astronaut and several hundred para-astronauts have already applied for the role, ESA chief Josef Aschbacher told Reuters on Friday.
The 22-member space program has just closed its latest decadal recruitment call for astronauts and has received 22,000 applicants, Ashbacher said.
“We want to launch a disabled astronaut, which will be the first time,” said the Austrian. “But I’m also happy for ESA because it shows that the place is for everyone, and that’s what I want to convey.”
ESA, whose Ariane rocket once dominated the market for commercial satellite launches, faces ever tighter competition from tech-funded upstarts like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
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Amazon founder Bezos hopes to become the first person to go to space on his rocket next month, shedding light on the growing role the tech billionaire is playing in a field that was once dominated by public agencies.
“Space is developing very fast and if we don’t catch this train, we are left behind,” he said. Which could one day compete with the players of Silicon Valley.
The challenges are enormous: ESA’s 7 billion euro budget is a third of NASA’s, while its seven or eight launches a year are fewer than the 40 made by the United States.
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Ashbacher, who grew up in Austria staring at the stars atop his parents’ mountain farm, himself once applied to become an ESA astronaut when he was a student. But what was once geeky, specific excitement has now become mainstream, he said.
This year’s job ad attracted nearly three times the 8,000 applications received a decade ago, and a quarter of them were women, up from just 15 percent previously. ESA has promised to develop technologies to ensure people with disabilities, such as short feet, play a fuller role.
And those astronauts will go beyond the International Space Station: some will be stationed at the United States’ planned Gateway station on the Moon, while ESA member states are considering invitations from Chinese and Russian space agencies to participate in their similar Moonbase project .
Could European astronauts one day serve on two different moons simultaneously?
“The invitation is on the table, and it’s a great idea,” he said.