On Wednesday 30 October, the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) received a talk by the first Swiss astronaut, Claude Nicollier, who wanted to share his experience in space with the personnel of the IAC.
Claude Nicollier is the first Swiss astronaut to have flown into space. After his studies at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, Claude joined ESA as a member of their first group of astronauts. Since 2007 Nicollier has been a Professor at the Federal Polytechnical School at Lausanne.
He has spent more than 1000 hours in space (more than 42 days) including a space walk of over 8 hours. He participated in four missions with the Space Shuttle, of which two were concerned with the Hubble Space Telescope. The first was to rescue the telescope from the initial mistake with its optics, turning it into the most successful space telescope and the second to renew or substitute several of its instruments.