 | Léopold Eyharts: Encyclopedia II - Léopold Eyharts - Military and Flight Experience
Léopold Eyharts - Military and Flight Experience
He joined the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence in 1977 and was graduated as an aeronautical engineer in 1979. In 1980, he became a fighter pilot and was assigned to an operational Jaguar squadron in Istres Air Force Base (France). In 1985, he was assigned as a wing commander in Saint-Dizier Air Force base.
In 1988, he was graduated as a test pilot in the French test pilot school (EPNER) and was assigned to Bretigny flight test center near Paris. He then flew on different types of military and civilian aircraft including Mirage 2000, Alpha Jet, Mirage 3, Caravelle, C-160 mainly involved in radar and equipment testing.
He has logged 3500 flight hours as a fighter and test pilot in 40 different aircraft types, 21 parachute jumps including one ejection.
In 1990, Léopold Eyharts was selected as an astronaut by CNES (Center National d’Etudes Spatiales) and assigned to support the Hermes spaceplane program managed by the Hermes Crew office in Toulouse.
He became also one of the test pilots in charge of the CNES parabolic flights program, an experimental aircraft (Caravelle) managed by Bretigny Flight Test Center to provide a microgravity laboratory to the scientific community. In 1994, he was in charge of parabolic flight testing of the Caravelle replacement, an Airbus A300 which become operational in 1995.
In 1992, Léopold Eyharts participated in the second European Space Agency astronaut selection. At the end of the same year, he took part in an ESA evaluation of Russian “Bouran” Space Shuttle training in Moscow, where he flew in the Tupolev 154 Bouran in-flight simulator.
He also participated in two additional short-duration spaceflight training courses in Star City, Moscow—6-weeks in 1991 and 2-weeks in 1993.
Léopold Eyharts was assigned to full spaceflight training in January 1995. He trained as a back-up cosmonaut for the "Cassiopeia" French-Russian space mission, which took place in August 1996.
He was the prime cosmonaut for the follow-on CNES scientific space mission called “Pégase.” He flew in the Mir Space Station in February 1998. During the three week Pégase mission he performed various French experiments in the area of medical research, neuroscience, biology, fluid physics and technology. In completing his first space mission, he has logged 20 days, 18 hours and 20 minutes in space.
Other related archives1957, 1957 births, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2003, Airbus A300, Alpha Jet, April 28, Astronauts, Biarritz, Bretigny, C-160, CNES, Caravelle, Colonel, ESA, European astronauts, France, French Air Force, French spationauts, Hermes, Houston, Texas, International Space Station, Jaguar, Johnson Space Center, Living people, Légion d'honneur, Mir Space Station, Mirage 2000, Mirage 3, Moscow, NASA, Ordre National du Mérite, Paris, Russian, Saint-Dizier, Salon-de-Provence, Space Shuttle, Star City, Moscow, T-38, Toulouse, Tupolev 154, aeronautical engineer, astronaut, biology, copyright, cosmonaut, ejection, engineer, fluid, medical, microgravity, neuroscience, parachute, physics, radar, technology, test pilot, water, wilderness, wing commander
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Military and Flight Experience", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
