Pedro Duque training

ESA astronaut Pedro Duque, from Spain, practices with the controls of the latest version of the Soyuz ferry ship, the Soyuz TMA, at the Gagarin Training Center, also known as Zviezdny Gorodok ("Star City"), near Moscow, in July 2003, in preparation for his flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in October on Soyuz TMA-3 for the "Cervantes" mission. An engineer specialized in orbit determination systems, Pedro Duque was selected to join the ESA Astronaut Corps in May 1992. He served as Crew Interface Coordinator (CIC) for ESA's Euromir 94 mission to Mir in October-November 1994 and for the Life and Microgravity Spacelab (LMS) mission flown in June-July 1996 onboard Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-78). A certified NASA Mission Specialist since April 1998, he flew on Space Shuttle Discovery, from October 29 to November 7, 1998, for the STS-95 mission, which carried five ESA scientific facilities. Assigned to ESA's ESTEC technical center in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, Pedro Duque has been supporting development of the Columbus and Cupola projects from 1999 to 2002. Since April 2001, Pedro Duque has been assigned to the first ISS advanced training class to prepare for one of the first European long-term flights on board ISS. In early 2003, he was assigned to the Soyuz TMA-3 mission to the ISS in October 2003 with Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Kaleri and NASA astronaut Michael Foale. After a one-week stay in the ISS, Pedro Duque will return to Earth onboard Soyuz TMA-2 with the station's previous permanent crew, Yuri Malenchenko and NASA's Edward Lu.