Swiss astronaut Marco Sieber completes NASA space station training

Born in 1989, Marco Sieber is a trained doctor who was selected to join the European Space Agency (ESA) in 2022. © Keystone/ Alessandro della Valle

Swiss astronaut Marco Sieber has just completed six months of training at the US space agency NASA in Texas. This takes him a step closer to travelling to the International Space Station.

Sieber, 35, who is part of the European Space Agency (ESA) corps, was recently in Houston, Texas, at NASA headquarters for an intensive six-month training course. This takes him closer to his dream of flying in space and being part of the crew of the International Space Station (ISS).

“It will be before 2030, I hope,” he told Swiss public television, RSI. “Training for a long-term mission of at least six months takes three years. And I’m still a year-and-a-half away from being able to go into space.”

During his training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, the world’s largest swimming pool, Sieber immersed himself in an environment that imitates weightlessness.

“There’s basically an entire space station underwater,” he explains. “If you look there, those round modules are where the astronauts live.”

Wearing a 100kg suit, Sieber completed a series of complex exercises to prepare for the challenges that await him in space.

Born in Biel/Bienne in 1989, Sieber is a trained doctor who specialises in urology. But his passion for flight and space led him to apply to the ESA in 2021.

Selected in 2022 from among 22,500 aspiring astronauts, he is the first Swiss to take this path since Claude Nicollier, who flew with the Space Shuttle in the 1990s.

Sieber’s story has not gone unnoticed. When they met, Swiss Economics Minister Guy Parmelin joked: “You were chosen from among 22,500… becoming a cabinet minister is slightly less difficult.”

Adapted from Italians by DeepL/sb