Hervé Stevenin

In September 2013, Stevenin and ESA astronaut Jean-François Clervoy slipped into the roles of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin for an underwater simulation test of Apollo 11 moonwalk tasks, organised by the Compagnie maritime d'expertises (COMEX) off the coast of Marseilles, France. They tested a COMEX-designed prototype training-spacesuit based on the Orlan adapted to simulate Moon gravity.

Stevenin applied to become an astronaut in Europe's astronaut selection of 2009 and was one of the last 45 finalists out of 8413 astronaut applicants from 17 European countries.

This spacewalk training experience led to the development and implementation of Europe's unique EVA Pre-Familiarisation, Proficiency Rebuilt & Recurrent Training course, which is now part of ESA's training for European astronauts. Stevenin is ESA's spacewalk instructor for European astronauts and has leads since 2007 the team that develops and implements spacewalk training at EAC. He has provided EVA training at EAC to the six European astronauts selected by ESA in 2009.

Stevenin served as EUROCOM, the European capsule communicator (CAPCOM) that communicates from Columbus Control Centre with astronauts in orbit. He led the Eurocom Team from 2007 to 2012 and served in 2012 as CAPCOM and support diver of the 16th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 16).

In 2004 Stevenin received spacewalk training in NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits at the Johnson Space Center and at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory in Houston, and completed in 2011 six weeks of EVA training and certification in the Russian Orlan space suit at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City, Russia), in Moscow with ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen.

When he joined ESA and the European Astronaut Centre in 1999 as the Head of the Payload Training Unit in the Astronaut Training Division, he developed and implemented the first ESA Payload Training Programme at EAC for the International Space Station astronauts and was later trained and certified as Columbus (ISS module) Operator.

Hervé Stevenin (born 25 September 1962 in France) is a European aquanaut leading ESA Neutral Buoyancy Facility Operations and the EVA Training Unit at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. He served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 19 (NEEMO 19) crew.