Léopold Eyharts graduated as an
engineer from the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence in 1979. He
qualified as a fighter pilot in Tours, France in 1980 and graduated from the
EPNER French test pilot school in Istres in 1988.
Léopold Eyharts
has been decorated as Officer of the French Légion dHonneur and
Chevalier de lOrdre National du Mérite. He was awarded the
Médaille dOutre-Mer, the Silver Medal of the Défense
Nationale and the Russian medals for Friendship and Courage. Léopold
Eyharts joined the French Air Force Academy of Salon-de-Provence and graduated
as an aeronautical engineer in 1979. In 1980 he became a fighter pilot assigned
to an operational Jaguar A squadron in Istres Air Force Base in France. In
1985, he became a flight commander at Saint-Dizier Air Force base. In 1988 he
was assigned to the Brétigny-sur-Orge Flight Test Centre near Paris,
France, and promoted to Chief Test Pilot in 1990. Brigadier General, French Air
Force.
In 1990, Léopold Eyharts was selected as an astronaut by
Frances
CNES space agency and assigned to the Hermes
spacecraft programme managed in Toulouse, France. He was also one of the test
pilots and engineer in charge of
CNES parabolic flight programme with the
Caravelle aircraft and carried out Airbus A300 qualification flights. In August
1998, Léopold Eyharts joined
ESAs Astronaut Corps based at the European
Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. He was assigned to train at
NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, USA,
where he became part of the 1998 Mission Specialist Class.
He was selected
as backup for
Soyuz TM-24. From 61 European candidates for
the
ESA
1991 selection he was one of six French candidates (and on the shortlist of 25
candidate applicants), but not selected then.
His hobbies include jogging,
mountain biking, tennis, reading and working with computers.