EAC trains its first international astronaut class.

After several years of planning and preparation, ESA's ISS training programme has become operational. Between 26 August and 6 September, the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) near Cologne gave the first ESA advanced training course for an international ISS astronaut class. The ten astronauts who took part--two from NASA, four from Japan and four from ESA--had begun their advanced training programme back in 2001 with sessions at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston and at the Japanese Training Centre in Tsukuba.