ESA Astronaut Roberto Vittori. ESA is in the process of creating a single European astronaut corps by merging existing national astronaut programmes with the ESA programme. A number of new astronauts are also being selected. The goal is to have a total of 16 astronauts by mid-2000 in order to meet the demand for European astronauts as the ISS is assembled and onboard research begins. At the time this photograph was taken at ESA's Paris headquarters, the European corps comprised 12 astronauts [Image Date: 1998/09] [98.10.004-014]