Claude Nicollier

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Claude Nicollier
Claude Nicollier
Country: Switzerland
Organization: ESA
selected on 22nd December 1977
Calls: 4 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		July 31, 1992
Landing of the
last space flight: 		December 28, 1999
Time in space: 42d 12h 5min
EVA inserts: 1
EVA total duration: 8h 10min
retired on March 2007
Space flights

Claude Nicollier (born September 2, 1944 in Vevey , Vaud ) is a Swiss military, airline and NASA test pilot and astronaut . He was the first and so far only Swiss citizen to visit space .

biography

Due to a car accident at Easter 1969, his career as a militia pilot with Fliegerstaffel 5 of the Swiss Air Force seemed to have come to an end. When Nicollier saw the first moon landing on July 21, 1969 on television , he made every effort to be able to fly again. A year later he was back in the cockpit, studying physics in Lausanne and graduating in 1970 with a licentiate. This was followed by a postgraduate degree in astrophysics in Geneva which it completed in 1975. Then he trained as an airline pilot. After completing this training, he flew a 1974 DC-9 of Swissair .

From 1976 he worked as a scientist at ESA in Noordwijk , where he applied as a spaceman and was selected for the first ESA astronaut group in December 1977 .

The asteroid (14826) Nicollier is named after him.

Space travel

As part of a cooperation program between ESA and NASA , Claude Nicollier flew four times into space with four different space shuttles.

Its first deployment was planned for the STS-51-H mission in November 1985 and, after its cancellation, the STS-61-K mission in October 1986, but the flight was canceled after the Challenger disaster .

From July 31 to August 8, 1992, Nicollier orbited the earth 136 times in eight days on board the Space Shuttle Atlantis as part of the STS-46 mission , for which the then Swiss Federal Councilor Adolf Ogi gave him a quick bon mot on August 7 "Joy reigns, Monsieur Nicollier" congratulated.

From December 2 to 13, 1993 on board the Endeavor with STS-61 and from February 22 to March 9, 1996 on board the Columbia with STS-75 , further flights followed. During the last flight from December 19 to 27, 1999 with the Discovery STS-103 , he and the rest of the crew proved themselves to be an expert on the Hubble space telescope . He made his first space exit and installed new instruments on the telescope. Nicollier had already made a name for himself beforehand, particularly with his skill in operating the shuttle's manipulator arm. During his service, he has received several awards, such as the NASA Distinguished Service Medal (2001) and four times the NASA Space Flight Medal (1992, 1993, 1996, 1999).

Nicollier is the first European to do four space flights. Oddly enough, all flights were low- inclination missions , so Nicollier never flew over Switzerland.

From 2000 to 2007 he worked for NASA's astronaut office in the spacecraft department.

Activities after the space career

In 2004 Nicollier accepted a teaching position at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne . In March 2007 he left ESA after taking on a full professorship at EPFL.

In 2005 Nicollier was elected to the board of directors of the Swatch Group . As long as he was an astronaut with ESA and NASA, he did not receive any board fees. Since June 2007 he has also been Chairman of the Board of Directors of the CSEM Research and Development Center and since 2009 Head of Solar Impulse's flight tests .

"Faux Dufaux" project

On August 28, 2010, Claude Nicollier was to repeat the pioneering aviation act of the brothers Henri and Armand Dufaux and fly over Lake Geneva along the historic flight route from 1910. To mark the 100th anniversary of the flight, the “Faux Dufaux” working group recreated the “ Dufaux 4 ”, the oldest surviving Swiss aircraft, on display in the Swiss Museum of Transport . A total of around 3,000 helpers - private individuals, lecturers, apprentices and students - from EPFL , French- speaking universities of applied sciences and vocational schools took part in the project, with a budget of CHF 4.7 million. However, the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCA) has so far refused to approve the replica and has requested that essential parts be redesigned. In September 2011, Nicollier stated that he wanted to use his good relationships with the FOCA to get the Dufaux replica off the ground.

Private

Nicollier has been widowed since the end of 2007; he has two children. In addition to his experiences outside the earth's atmosphere, he describes an ascent to the Matterhorn together with his then 14-year-old daughter in 1992 as the highlight of his life.

See also

Web links

Commons : Claude Nicollier  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ astronauts. In: esa.int. Retrieved March 23, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Bye, bye Endeavor - Swiss astronaut Nicollier looks back. ( Memento from November 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) On Swiss television from May 20, 2011
  3. ↑ Video ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from August 7, 1992 (from 2:55 minutes) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.srf.ch
  4. ^ Astronaut on the Swatch Board of Directors Article from news.ch from May 18, 2005
  5. ↑ Claude Nicollier is flight test manager of Solar Impulse Article on the ESA portal dated December 8, 2009
  6. ↑ Tages-Anzeiger (December 23, 2008): Replica of Switzerland's oldest aircraft - Nicollier piloted , accessed on December 23, 2008
  7. ↑ LeTemps.ch (September 28, 2011): Le “FauXDufauX” cloué au sol , accessed on November 7, 2011, not freely accessible
personal data
SURNAME Nicollier, Claude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss military, airline and NASA test pilot and astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Vevey , Canton of Vaud