Neuroscientist Raphaël Liégeois was chosen by the European Space Agency to go to space.

Raphaël Liégeois, who holds a double nationality as Belgian and Luxembourgish, was selected in November 2022 by the European Space Agency (ESA), after a strict 18-month selection process with more than 22,500 candidates, to be one of the five astronauts to travel to and perform experiments in the International Space Station (ISS).

Apart from starting his career as an astronaut, Liégeois is a neuroscientist and did his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Steven Laureys and Prof. Rodolphe Sepulchre at the University of Liège in Belgium, where he was involved with the Human Brain Project. During his PhD, he worked on developing the mathematics of dynamical modeling of resting state magnetic resonance brain imaging (MRI). Since 2018, he has been working at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, and since 2021 he has been teaching neuroengineering at EPFL and the University of Geneva.

How did you get into neuroscience?

I started out as an engineer. I finished my studies in biomedical engineering at the University of Liège. Later for my PhD, I got into neuroscience because I was really fascinated by the topic. It seemed to be at the nexus between mathematics, physics, physiology and also higher-level topics such as philosophy. My impression was that it was really an unknown territory that could be explored. For my PhD, I came into contact with Steven, who could support me on the medical side, and my other supervisor, Rodolphe, was an engineer. 

What was the topic of your PhD project?

To start, there are a lot of MRI data available from different sources, functional MRI, in particular, that reflect the level of neuronal activity in different regions of the brain as a function of time. However, most of the tools and metrics that are being used to model these data are too simple technically to capture the complexity of the data.

These current metrics are also called static, because they render an average picture of the dependencies between activity in different brain regions. The aim of my PhD project was to go from a static view to a so-called dynamic view in analyzing the MRI data, to get a more accurate picture of how brain regions are on average functionally connected.

I developed the mathematical aspect of this, to see how dynamic markers were affected in different states of consciousness. 

Why, as a neuroscientist, did you apply for a space mission?

I remember that, when I applied to a grant to become an engineer and move to Liège, my cover letter started with the sentence “I dream of becoming an astronaut”. I was 17 at the time.

The dream has always been there. But not in the sense that I built my life around it, and that I put all my cards on becoming an astronaut, because I knew it was very unlikely to happen. There's a lot of chance involved, many things that need to come together in order for this to happen.

The last ESA selection was in 2008, but I was too young to apply. I was very happy doing neuroscience research during the years in between, but I always kept an eye on the next ESA call opening. Due to COVID, there were delays, but then the next call opened in 2021, and I applied and got selected.

When does your training for the space mission start?

On April 1st, I will start with one year of basic training together with the other career astronaut candidates. During our training, we will essentially learn the basics of space flight, so that we will be ready to prepare for a specific mission. Depending on our backgrounds we will also have to fill in some knowledge gaps, so I might not have exactly the same courses as the other candidates. The training will take place in the European Astronaut Center near Cologne.

After the training, we will have to wait to be assigned to a mission. And once that happens, we have two years of preparation for that specific mission. This includes preparation for all types of emergencies that can happen, but also learning about the experiments that we will be doing aboard the ISS. The missions themselves typically last six months.

What type of experiments will you perform?

We, as candidates, have a very limited impact on what type of experiments will be carried out. The experimental plans need to be submitted through a long process at the ESA, where first the most relevant experiments are selected; then, they have to be checked on being safe enough to run on board the ISS; after that, a lot of tests and parabolic flights need to take place to validate the experimental set-up, and only then can they be done on board the ISS.

Of course, the ESA knows that I’m a neuroscientist, so if there are experiments to do in physiology, for example, they know that I will be happy to do them. They already started carrying out some neuroscience experiments on board the ISS, so I hope to further support them in this.

(Note by the editor: the research in the ISS includes work carried out as part of the HBP, refer to references below).

Interview conducted by Matthijs de Boer

References

Doroshin A, Jillings S, Jeurissen B, et al. Brain Connectometry Changes in Space Travelers After Long-Duration Spaceflight. Front Neural Circuits. 2022 Feb 18;16:815838. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2022.815838

Jillings S, Pechenkova E, Tomilovskaya E, et al. Prolonged microgravity induces reversible and persistent changes on human cerebral connectivity. Commun Biol. 2023 Jan 13;6(1):46. doi: 10.1038/s42003-022-04382-w.

Van Ombergen A, Demertzi A, Tomilovskaya E, et al. The effect of spaceflight and microgravity on the human brain. J Neurol. 2017 Oct;264(Suppl 1):18-22. doi: 10.1007/s00415-017-8427-x