with the European Space Agency (ESA). He was aboard the Discovery space shuttle flight of October 1998 that deployed the Spartan 201 spacecraft. He was a member of the Expedition Eight crew on the International Space Station, launched in October 2003 on Soyuz TMA-3 and doing scientific, technical, and educational experiments during a stay of more than a week. He was selected as an ESA astronaut in 1992, supporting two ESA-Russian missions before reporting to the Johnson Space Center from 1996.