Jean-François Clervoy

JeanFrançois André Clervoy born 19 November 1958 is a French engineer and a CNES and ESA astronaut He is a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle missions Clervoy was born 19 November 1958 in LongevillelèsMetz France the son of Mireille Lemonde and Jean Clervoy a former French Air Force pilot From an early age he took an interest in space exploration and dreamt of becoming an astronaut When I was in second grade Clervoy says my teacher used to tell us that when we would be grown up we would be able to fly in space the same way he was able to buy a ticket to go to the United States While born in the French region of Lorraine Clervoy considers Toulouse to be his adopted hometown He has a twin brother Patrick Clervoy a military psychiatrist He received his baccalauréat from Collège Militaire de SaintCyrlÉcole in 1976 he passed Math Sup and Math Spé M at Prytanée Militaire La Flèche in 1978 He graduated from École Polytechnique Paris in 1981 He then became a member of the Corps of Armament He graduated from École nationale supérieure de laéronautique et de lespace Toulouse in 1983 he graduated as a Flight Test Engineer from École du personnel navigant dessais et de réception Istres in 1987 In 1983 Clervoy was seconded from the Direction générale de larmement DGA to CNES French Space Agency where he works on autopilot systems for various projects such as the earth observation satellite SPOT the optical intersatellite space link STAR or the comet probe VEGA Clervoy is Ingénieur Général de lArmement in the Corps of Armament at the DGA He was selected in the second group of French astronauts in 1985 and started intensive Russian language training From 1987 until 1992 he directed the parabolic flight program at the Flight Test Center BrétignysurOrge and provided technical support to the European human space program within the ESA Hermes crew office in Toulouse From 1983 to 1987 Clervoy was also a lecturer in signal processing and general mechanics at the École nationale supérieure de laéronautique et de lespace Toulouse In 1991 he trained in Star City Moscow on the Soyuz and Mir systems In 1992 he joined the Astronaut Corps of the European Space Agency ESA at the European Astronaut Center EAC in Cologne In August 1992 Clervoy was detached to the NASA Johnson Space Center Houston to gain the Space Shuttle mission specialist qualifications In between his space flights Clervoy was assigned as flight software verification lead in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory SAIL and as robotics display design lead for Shuttle and ISS After his third spaceflight he was assigned as the International Space Station display integration lead in the NASAJSC Astronaut Office He flew twice aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis and once aboard Discovery or a total of 675 hours in space Due to the difficulty that American astronauts had in pronouncing his name Clervoy was nicknamed Billy Bob From 2001 through 2008 he was assigned Senior Advisor Astronaut of the Automated Transfer Vehicle ESA project in Les Mureaux France In 2008 he was also appointed member of the selection board for the new ESA astronaut class Source Article JeanFrançois Clervoy from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30