Claude Nicollier
Claude Nicollier
Claude Nicollieris the first astronaut from Switzerland, and has flown on four Space Shuttle missions. His first spaceflightwas in 1992, and his final spaceflightwas in 1999. He took part in two servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope. During his final spaceflight he participated in a spacewalk, becoming the first European Space Agency astronaut to do so during a Space Shuttle mission. In 2000 he was assigned to the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Activity Branch, while maintaining a position as Lead...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth2 September 1944
CityVevey, Switzerland
CountryUnited States of America
Claude Nicollier quotes about
On one hand, to be able to go from one direction in the sky to study such an object to another direction to study another object, and on the other hand to be able to maintain accurately the position in space.
The computer that is presently on board is a relatively old computer that has limited capability in terms of its speed and its memory capacity.
In a way, what we do is not totally different from some of the tasks that will be performed for the assembly of the International Space Station.
You can see these boxes which are covered with metal foils for thermal reasons, and they are also, most of the time, thermally controlled inside to keep reasonable temperature inside each of these containers.
I didn't think that, as a Swiss, it was possible to do that, although I was really dreaming to do that. It was an impossible dream.
As far as the radio waves part of the spectrum, we can do these adequately from the ground because the atmosphere is basically transparent to our radio waves.
My first dream as a child was to become a pilot. My second dream was to become an astronomer, and I pursued in parallel efforts and studies in these two areas.
In general, the objects in the universe that are very high-energy objects, or the processes that are high-energy processes, will radiate more in the short wavelength range towards the gamma rays or the x-rays.
Hubble is very close to my heart, and going back to Hubble, because I was there once already in 1993, is really a great privilege for me.
My name was on the list very early after these announcements were made through the newspapers in Europe.
We developed already, before the first servicing mission, this has been further developed on the second servicing mission and we refined it this time, all the terminology.