Announcement

ESA Astronaut Pedro Duque visits ESO's Headquarters

27 June 2013

On 27 June 2013, one of ESA’s astronauts, Pedro Duque, visited ESO Headquarters in Garching bei München, Germany. He was received on his arrival by ESO’s Director General, Tim de Zeeuw. Duque is a member of ESA’s European Astronaut Corps, and currently is head of the Flight Operations Office located at the Columbus Control Centre near Munich.

During the visit, Mr Duque was briefed about ESO’s programme and had the chance to tour the facilities at ESO Headquarters and see some of the instrumentation being developed in house, including hardware for the future European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). After lunch with ESO representatives, Duque addressed a large audience of ESO staff and students about his experiences as an astronaut and his current work.

As an ESA astronaut, Duque took part in two space missions. First as Mission Specialist on the Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-95 mission, in 1998, and later in 2003, when he went on a ten-day mission to the International Space Station.

Pedro Duque is also an entrepreneur and has experience in the aerospace industry. During special leave from ESA, between 2006 and 2011, he led an Earth observation project named Deimos Imaging S.L. (DMI), as Managing Director and then as Executive President. DMI is a fully private company that operates Earth observation systems for commercial purposes. During this time, the company successfully launched its own satellite, named Deimos-1.

Contacts

Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 15 37 35 91
Email: rhook@eso.org