Cosmonaut Biography: Leopold Eyharts (original) (raw)

Léopold Eyharts graduated as an engineer from the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence in 1979. He qualified as a fighter pilot in Tours, France in 1980 and graduated from the EPNER French test pilot school in Istres in 1988.
Léopold Eyharts has been decorated as Officer of the French Légion d’Honneur and Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite. He was awarded the Médaille d’Outre-Mer, the Silver Medal of the Défense Nationale and the Russian medals for Friendship and Courage. Léopold Eyharts joined the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence and graduated as an aeronautical engineer in 1979. In 1980 he became a fighter pilot assigned to an operational Jaguar A squadron in Istres Air Force Base in France. In 1985, he became a flight commander at Saint-Dizier Air Force base. In 1988 he was assigned to the Brétigny-sur-Orge Flight Test Centre near Paris, France, and promoted to Chief Test Pilot in 1990. Brigadier General, French Air Force.
In 1990, Léopold Eyharts was selected as an astronaut by France’sCNES space agency and assigned to the Hermes spacecraft programme managed in Toulouse, France. He was also one of the test pilots and engineer in charge ofCNES’ parabolic flight programme with the Caravelle aircraft and carried out Airbus A300 qualification flights. In August 1998, Léopold Eyharts joinedESA’s Astronaut Corps based at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He was assigned to train atNASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA, where he became part of the 1998 Mission Specialist Class.
He was selected as backup forSoyuz TM-24. From 61 European candidates for the ESA 1991 selection he was one of six French candidates (and on the shortlist of 25 candidate applicants), but not selected then.
His hobbies include jogging, mountain biking, tennis, reading and working with computers.