European Space Agency welcomes 5 new astronauts to its fourth class after receiving over 20,000 applicants

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. For the past year, five fit, academically superior men and women have been spun in centrifuges, submerged for hours, deprived temporarily of oxygen, taught to camp in the snow, and schooled in physiology, anatomy, astronomy, meteorology, robotics, and Russian. On Monday, the five Europeans and an Australian graduated from basic training with a new title: astronaut. At a ceremony in Cologne, Germany, ESA added the five newcomers to its astronaut corps eligible for missions to the International Space Station, bringing the total to 11. HOW ASTRONAUTS ON THE ISS ARE TACKLING THE LATEST'UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES' MILES ABOVE THE EARTH ESA has negotiated with NASA for three places on future Artemis moon missions, although those places will likely go to the more senior astronauts, according to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.