Sławosz Uznański’s appointment to an ESA space mission was announced on Wednesday night, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The Polish government’s taskforce for innovation and digitisation, GovTech, said on Twitter: “We’ve waited 45 years for this day. After the historic mission featuring Mirosław Hermaszewski, Sławosz Uznański, a member of the ESA Astronaut Reserve, will travel to space as the second Pole in history.”
The government added: “Our heartfelt congratulations. We can’t wait for the broadcast of the launch.”
Uznański, who works for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) Control Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, was selected to join the ESA’s Astronaut Reserve in November, out of over 22,000 candidates, the PAP news agency reported.
A graduate of the Łódź University of Technology in central Poland, Uznański also holds an M.Sc. degree from Université de Nantes and Diplôme d’Ingénieur from Polytech’Nantes in France.
In 2011, Uznański defended his Ph.D. dissertation with honours at France’s University of Aix-Marseille, the PAP news agency reported.
He has written a book on radiation effects in electronic circuits and co-authored more than 50 scientific papers, according to officials.
His research interests focus on the impact of space radiation on humans, reporters were told.
In an interview with PAP in November, Uznański said the ESA might use his knowledge and experience on a mission to upgrade the International Space Station’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02).
Installed in 2011, the AMS-02 is “a particle-physics detector that looks for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter” and also performs “precision measurements of cosmic rays,” according to the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, CERN
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