Sabbatical in space

Sławosz Uznański had to bide his time. Since its foundation in 1975, the European Space Agency (ESA) had only opened four selection rounds for new astronauts. When a fresh opportunity arose in 2021, Uznański’s colleagues in CERN’s electric power converters group were supportive of his ambitions to take an extended sabbatical in space. Now confirmed as one of 17 astronauts selected from among more than 22,000 applicants, Uznański is in training for future missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

His new colleagues are a diverse bunch, including geologists, medical doctors, astrophysicists, biologists, biotechnologists, jet fighter pilots and helicopter pilots. His own background is as a physicist and systems engineer. Following academic work studying the effect of radiation on semiconductors, Uznański spent 12 years at CERN working on powering existing infrastructure and future projects such as the Future Circular Collider. He’s most proud of being a project leader in reliability engineering and helping to design and deploy a new radiation-tolerant power-converter control system to the entire LHC accelerator complex.

Preparing for orbit

For now, Uznański’s astronaut training is mostly theoretical, preparing him for the ISS’s orbit-trajectory control, thermal control, communications, data handling, guidance, navigation and power generation, where he has deep expertise. But lift-off may not be far away, and one of his reserve-astronaut colleagues, Marcus Wandt, is already sitting up in the ISS capsule.

“I had the chance, in January, to see him launch from Cape Canaveral. And then, thanks to my operational experience at CERN, being in the control room, I came back directly to Columbus Control Center in Munich. Throughout the whole mission, I was in the control room, to support the mission and learn what I might live through one day.”

Rather than expertise or physical fitness, Uznański sees curiosity as the golden thread for astronauts – not least because they have to be able to perform any type of experiment that is assigned to them. As a Polish astronaut, he will have responsibility for the scientific experiments that are intended to accompany his country’s first mission to the ISS, most likely in late 2024 or early 2025. Among 66 proposals from Polish institutes, a dozen or more are currently being considered to fly.

CERN is extremely open in terms of technologies and I very much identify myself with that

The experiments are as diverse as the astronauts’ professional backgrounds. One will non-invasively monitor astronauts’ brain activity to help develop human–machine interfaces for artificial limbs. Another – a radiation monitor developed at CERN – plays on the fact that shielded high-energy physics environments have a similar radiation environment to the ISS in low-earth orbit. Uznański hopes that this technology can be commercialised and become another example of the opportunities out there for budding space entrepreneurs.

“I think we are in a fascinating moment for space exploration,” he explains, pointing to the boom in the commercial sector since 2014. “Space technology has gotten really democratised and commercialised. And I think it opens up possibilities for all types of engineers who build systems with great ideas and great science.”

Open science is a hot topic here. It’s increasingly possible to access venture capital to develop related technologies, notes Uznański, and the challenge is to ensure that the science is used in an open manner. “There is a big overlap between CERN culture and ESA culture in this respect. CERN is extremely open in terms of technologies and I very much identify myself with that.”

However societies choose to shape the future of open science in space, the two organisations are already partnering on several projects devoted to the pure curiosity that is dear to Uznański’s heart. These range from Euclid’s study of dark energy (CERN Courier May/June 2023 p7) to the ongoing study of cosmic rays by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). With AMS due for an upgrade in 2026 (CERN Courier March/April 2024 p7), he cannot help but hope to be on that flight.

“If the opportunity arises, it’s a clear yes from me.”