Jean-François Clervoy

Jean-François André Clervoy (born 19 November 1958) is a French engineer and a CNES and ESA astronaut. He is a veteran of three NASA Space Shuttle missions. Clervoy was born 19 November 1958 in Longeville-lès-Metz, France, the son of Mireille Lemonde and Jean Clervoy, a former French Air Force pilot. From an early age, he took an interest in space exploration and dreamt of becoming an astronaut: "When I was in second grade, Clervoy says, my teacher used to tell us that when we would be grown up, we would be able to fly in space, the same way he was able to buy a ticket to go to the United States." While born in the French region of Lorraine, Clervoy considers Toulouse to be his adopted hometown. He has a twin brother, Patrick Clervoy, a military psychiatrist. He received his baccalauréat from Collège Militaire de Saint-Cyr-l'École in 1976; he passed Math. Sup. and Math. Spé. M' at Prytanée Militaire, La Flèche in 1978. He graduated from École Polytechnique, Paris, in 1981. He then became a member of the Corps of Armament. He graduated from École nationale supérieure de l'aéronautique et de l'espace, Toulouse, in 1983; he graduated as a Flight Test Engineer from École du personnel navigant d'essais et de réception, Istres, in 1987. In 1983 Clervoy was seconded from the Direction générale de l'armement (DGA) to CNES (French Space Agency) where he works on autopilot systems for various projects such as the earth observation satellite SPOT, the optical inter-satellite space…