The European Space Agency has named five new career astronauts – two women and three men – while member states agreed to boost the agency's budget by 17 percent in order to keep up with competition from the United States and China.
The ESA's new class of career astronauts includes France's Sophie Adenot, a helicopter test pilot, along with Pablo Alvarez Fernandez from Spain, Britain's Rosemary Coogan, Belgian Raphael Liegeois and Marco Sieber from Switzerland.
