Who Was The First French Astronaut In Space?

Jean-Loup Chrétien was a French astronaut born on August 20, 1938, in La Rochelle, France. He made history as the first person from Western Europe to venture into space. In June 1982, he embarked on a Soviet flight to the Salyut 7 space station. He later went on to fly a second mission to space station Mir in 1988 and returned as a U.S.-trained astronaut aboard the space shuttle in 1997.

Chrétien obtained his degree from the French Air Force Academy in Salon-de-Provence in southeastern France in 1961. He rose to the rank of brigadier general in the French air force and began his career as a fighter pilot and test pilot in 1962. In 1980, he was assigned to the French space agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES). Following his 1982 Salyut flight, he became the head of the CNES astronaut office and began training for a flight aboard the space shuttle in 1984-85. However, the Challenger accident of 1986 led to the postponement of his flight opportunity. In 1988, he embarked on his first flight to Mir and later participated in training as a pilot of the Soviet space shuttle Buran from 1990-93 before that program was canceled.

In 1995, Chrétien resumed his astronaut training, this time with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He not only completed a second spaceflight to Mir in 1997 but also collaborated extensively with NASA on U.S.-Russian cooperative activities. Unfortunately, Chrétien had to retire from his astronaut role in 2001 due to an off-duty accident.



Following his retirement, Chrétien went on to become the senior vice president of research and development at Tietronix, a software engineering company located in Houston, Texas. In 2002, he founded Tietronix Optics, a French-based optical technology company situated in Lannion.