If, in the 1990s, you had asked a young child from Larissa what he wanted to become when he grew up, and he had answered “an astronaut,” you might have smiled sympathetically. “What are the chances that a child from the Thessalian plain would one day make it into space, on a mission with the Greek flag on his sleeve?” you might have thought. And yet, that bespectacled child would prove you wrong: in the second half of 2027, he will become the first Greek to travel into space.

Even in recent years, when the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, spoke of a “national space programme” and a “Greek presence in space,” few would have dared imagine that we would so soon see one of our compatriots in a spacesuit aboard the International Space Station (ISS). It seemed more like the kind of childhood daydream inspired by watching shooting stars with his parents beneath the crystal-clear summer sky of Platamon, imagining that one day he might see them up close.

What the Greek Astronaut Will Do in Space

The minister had spoken of it, and the Prime Minister formally announced the details. From Paris, where the International Space Summit was taking place, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, standing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron—given that the mission is a Franco-German initiative aimed at strengthening Europe’s presence in the space industry—announced Greece’s participation in the PAM-6 mission, scheduled for the summer of 2027.

For the first time in history, a Greek will take part: Dr Adrianos Golemis. “Adrianos will make us proud,” the Greek Prime Minister said.

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Neil Armstrong said as his boot touched the surface of the Moon on July 21, 1969. “This was the final step we needed,” Golemis says, explaining that, as Greece, “we already have a satellite programme, and Greek scientists have contributed to astronomy and other areas, so the opportunity to join an astronaut mission was that final step.”

Golemis, a doctor who has worked as a flight surgeon for the European Space Agency, providing medical support to ESA astronauts, will participate as a mission specialist on PAM-6, which, if all goes according to plan, will take place in the second half of next year. The flight will be carried out aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched on a Falcon 9 rocket, most likely from Cape Canaveral in the United States.

“A historic milestone for Greece, which is now moving from space ambition to a concrete crewed mission,” the European Space Agency (ESA) said, noting that cooperation with Vast and NASA also opens the way for Greek scientific experiments and technological applications aboard the ISS.

NASA has already welcomed Greece into the broader international cooperation framework for space exploration. Since 2024, Greece has been a signatory to the Artemis Accords, becoming the 35th country to join the agreement, and NASA congratulated the country on its historic participation in the mission.

So what will Golemis actually do during his two-week stay in space?

A graduate of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Golemis has already received extensive training in space sciences and has participated in research and programmes examining the effects of space conditions on the human body.

During the mission, which NASA has assigned to Vast as part of the first private astronaut mission to the ISS, Adrianos Golemis will conduct scientific experiments on behalf of European and, particularly, Greek research institutions and companies.

“We conduct research in space because we extract knowledge that we can apply on Earth. Naturally, every astronaut conducts experiments in whatever field is required, such as biology, chemistry or physics,” he explains, adding that medicine has particular importance for him because of his professional background.

There is another advantage for Greece’s first astronaut: through a fortunate twist of fate, he will not be a stranger among strangers. The commander of the mission, in which he will serve as a mission specialist, will be French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Golemis already knows the French commander well. During Pesquet’s previous mission, Golemis served as his doctor. Indeed, this is how the wider public first came to know Golemis—as the “astronauts’ doctor.”

“Now you’ll get to see things from the other side,” Pesquet told the Greek scientist when he learned that they would be travelling together to the International Space Station. They will be joined by Czech astronaut Aleš Svoboda and another European astronaut whose identity has not yet been announced.

Golemis will not be travelling to space simply to gaze into the infinite universe and send back selfies and photographs of Greece and Earth “as you see it from above.”

As he has explained, “We know that the changes that occur in the body in space provide a useful simulation of extreme conditions, including ageing and certain diseases. By preventing and addressing some of the symptoms that emerge in space, we gradually learn how to understand and treat similar symptoms on Earth.”

He cites pharmacology as an example, pointing to the cancer drug pembrolizumab. Research conducted aboard the International Space Station helped improve the way the drug is administered.

“Because in space every substance behaves somewhat differently in the absence of gravity, we can better understand its characteristics. This matters because it can improve health, improve what patients experience, make treatments easier or more difficult to undergo, and also slightly reduce the workload of hospital staff.”

From the Thessalian Plain to the Universe

The truth is that nights on the Thessalian plain bring you remarkably close to the stars. As a young child, Golemis developed his connection with the vastness of the universe while sitting with his parents and gazing at the clear skies above Platamon.

From those happy years in Larissa—a place he considers himself fortunate to have grown up in, precisely because it lacked the impersonal chaos of huge urban centres such as Athens—Adrianos Golemis has come close to having his name written in gold in the history of Greece, and Europe: to being recorded in school textbooks as the first Greek to travel into space.

He is now preparing to travel to the United States for the next phase of his training, working with teams from Vast, SpaceX and NASA. He will begin specialised training for the International Space Station mission, preparing for every stage of the journey, from launch to return to Earth, while also participating in elements of the ESA Astronaut Reserve training programme, which took place earlier this year.

Of course, the story may also have something to do with DNA. Golemis’s grandfather was a doctor and a distinguished scientist in Larissa, while his parents instilled in their two children a passion for exploration and open horizons.

Golemis has said that his parents fully supported their children in pursuing unconventional dreams, even when those ambitions initially seemed far removed from what was considered realistic in Greece.

His brother, Aris, a civil engineer by profession, has already travelled to the ends of the Earth. Sharing Adrianos’s passion for exploration, Aris was at one extreme of the planet while his brother was at the other. When Adrianos, selected by ESA, spent a year living in isolation at the Concordia research station in Antarctica, Aris was working on a research programme in the Arctic. The two brothers from Larissa thus found themselves simultaneously at the planet’s two most remote and frozen extremes, working on scientific projects.

Adrianos Golemis grew up in an environment rich in stimulation and, even as a young child in the late 1980s, influenced by the popular culture of the time, developed a fascination with “exotic” career choices such as astronaut or palaeontologist. From an early age, he also loved observing the stars, a passion that later developed into his major hobby: astrophotography.

Inevitably, while studying in Thessaloniki, he became involved with the Friends of Astronomy Club of Thessaloniki.

“It was an amateur club, but it put us on the right track, if you like, and into the dream—not necessarily of becoming astronauts, but of space itself and Greece’s place in astronomy and space,” he recalls.

After completing his medical studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Golemis moved to France, which became the base for his subsequent career in space medicine.

He completed a master’s degree in France, earning a Master of Space Studies from the International Space University (ISU), based in Strasbourg, with a focus on medical research in the field of space.

He also co-authored his thesis with the European Space Agency, examining the medical and psychological criteria for selecting astronauts for long-duration space missions, such as a potential future journey to Mars—a subject that proved remarkably prophetic in light of his subsequent career.

The Next Stop: Toulouse

In France, he worked as a specialist in space medicine at the French Institute of Space Medicine and Physiology (MEDES), based in Toulouse.

His role involved designing and supervising clinical studies, including prolonged bed-rest studies, which simulate the negative effects of microgravity and the space environment on the human body.

Because of his specialisation, MEDES seconded him operationally to the European Astronaut Centre (EAC). There, he worked first as a Flight Surgeon and later as Lead Flight Surgeon.

His job was to closely monitor the health, physical condition and psychological wellbeing of European astronauts before launch, during their time in space, and throughout the critical rehabilitation phase following their return to Earth.

Since 2018, he has worked at ESA as an astronaut doctor, providing medical support for seven space missions involving European astronauts. He has worked closely with NASA’s Mission Control in Houston and ESA’s centre in Cologne, as well as with some of Europe’s most prominent astronauts, including Thomas Pesquet, Italian veteran astronaut Luca Parmitano—who served as commander of the ISS and survived one of the most dangerous spacewalk incidents when water filled his helmet—and German astronaut Matthias Maurer.

This close experience with the “elite” of the space programme gave him the expertise he needed to take the next step himself.

He did so in 2021, when the European Space Agency opened a major astronaut selection process for the first time in 13 years. More than 22,500 applications were submitted from across Europe.

One in 22,500 Chances? “I Thought About Giving Up”

The road to historic achievement is never paved solely with success, happiness and smiles.

Golemis submitted his application but had little hope of being selected. His odds were, quite literally, one in 22,500—equivalent to 0.0044%.

The odds were so slim that he was statistically more likely to be struck by lightning at some point in his lifetime, to win the 5+1 jackpot in Greece’s Joker lottery with a single ticket, or—even more relevant to his field—for the asteroid 2024 YR4 to strike Earth in 2032, for an asteroid to destroy a civilisation within a century, or for a second Earth-like planet with water, an atmosphere, oxygen and observable life to be discovered by chance through our telescopes.

“When we started the selection process, there were 22,500 of us,” Golemis recalls.

In June 2021, protothema.gr reported: “European Space Agency: 280 Greeks among 22,000 astronaut candidates,” noting that applications had been submitted by 220 Greek men and 60 Greek women. The ESA already had astronauts such as Thomas Pesquet.

Naturally, the journalists could not have imagined that one Greek would emerge from such an extraordinarily demanding process. Nor, for that matter, did the eventual winner himself.

“In the end, there were 25 of us. Sometimes I thought it wasn’t worth it, that the chances were too small. But what stayed with me was the lesson that it is worth trying. It doesn’t mean it will work every time, but it is worth taking on the beautiful and the difficult things, because they will take us somewhere,” Golemis has said.

He went through an exhausting six-stage selection process that lasted more than a year. It included demanding medical examinations, cognitive ability tests, psychometric assessments, crisis-management exercises and interviews with senior officials.

The result was historic: he became the first Greek in history to successfully complete all six stages, earning a place among ESA’s final 25 selected astronauts—the Reserve/Project Astronauts—with a score placing him in the top 0.1% of Europe.

So how did he do it?

Beyond the tests themselves, Golemis had two major advantages that helped him stand out in the eyes of the selection panel.

The first was his Antarctic experience. He had already demonstrated that he could withstand the extreme psychological and physical conditions associated with space, having spent a year isolated at the Concordia research station.

The second was his experience as a Flight Surgeon. As a doctor who had already worked with ESA astronauts, he understood the systems, procedures and risks of spaceflight better than almost any other “external” candidate.

Passing the ESA tests placed him in the astronaut pool. But actually flying into space requires funding and a specific mission.

A key role was played by the Greek government’s decision to significantly strengthen Greece’s participation in the ESA. Against this backdrop, in September 2026, an official agreement was signed between ESA, Greece and the U.S. space company Vast.

The agreement secured Greece a place on a research mission—the PAM-6 mission—to the International Space Station in 2027.

As Adrianos Golemis was the only Greek who had already completed the full assessment process and begun preliminary training, he was automatically designated as the Project Astronaut who would represent Greece. The announcement was formally made in Paris by the Greek Prime Minister.

The rest is a space story that parents and grandparents may one day tell their children as they gaze at the stars from the Thessalian plain—or from somewhere else in Greece.

And as they point towards the crystal-clear sky, they may say: “One day, I’ll fly up there too.”

That is what Golemis once said—and what he is now set to do. As he himself predicts: “Inevitably, there will be other Greeks in space. The greater the return of this first mission for the country, the more opportunities will be created in the future.”