Michel Ange-Charles Tognini is a French test pilot, engineer, brigadier general in the French Air Force, and a former CNES and ESA astronaut who served from 1 January 2005 to 1 November 2011 as head of the European Astronaut Centre of the European Space Agency. A veteran of two space flights, Tognini has logged a total of 19 days in space. Tognini has 4000 flight hours on 80 types of aircraft. He is fluent in English and Russian.
Michel Tognini
CNES astronaut Michel Tognini works with a nitrogen freezer on the STS-93 Space Shuttle mission, which supported the Plant Growth Investigations in Microgravity (PGIM) and Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) experiments on this mission which took place in 1999. This mission also launched the Chandra X-ray telescope.
Empire Test Pilots' School
The Empire Test Pilots' School (ETPS) is a British training school for test pilots and flight test engineers of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft at MoD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire, England. It was established in 1943, the first of its type. The school moved to RAF Cranfield in October 1945, then to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough in July 1947, before returning to Boscombe Down on 29 January 1968.
The Armstrong Whitworth Apollo served the ETPS as a multi-engined trainer at Farnborough during the mid-fifties
RJ100 in 2013
Qinetiq/ETPS BAe Avro 146 RJ70 arrives at the 2017 Royal International Air Tattoo, England. LTPA on the forward fuselage indicates the Long Term Partnering Agreement between Qinetiq and the UK Ministry of Defence
AgustaWestland AW-109E Power (ZE416) of the Empire Test Pilots' School at the 2017 RIAT, England
