The European Space Agency has narrowed down the candidate list for its next generation of astronauts, including dozens who have a physical disability.

The agency announced last year that it had received a record number of 22,589 applicants from people hoping to become the continent's next generation of space travelers.

ESA said Tuesday it has reduced these to fewer than 1,400—including 29 of whom have a physical disability—and hoped to cut the shortlist down to several tens of candidates by the end of the year for the four to six positions on its astronaut training program.

The agency's director-general, Josef Aschbacher, said the selection process would be accompanied by a feasibility study to determine the implications of choosing candidates with disabilities "but, yes, we are committed at ESA to open space to everyone."

ESA has for decades relied on its Russian and American counterparts to launch astronauts into space. Currently the agency has several places booked on American commercial launches.

But Aschbacher said Europe may finally get its own crewed spacecraft if ESA member states approve the idea at a meeting later this year.

The first simulation of the ExoMars rover driving off its landing platform closed out an incredible year of preparations as the mission now marches with confidence towards a September launch.

ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover starts the year with months of successful maintenance and functional tests behind it. All its instruments are go for flight, with some minor tuning left to complete this month.

A world-first—or solar-system-first—archaeological project has this week begun on the International Space Station.

Led by archaeologists Associate Professor Alice Gorman from Flinders University and Associate Professor Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California, the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is the first archaeological study of a space habitat.

"We're the first to try to understand how humans relate to the items they live with in space," says Associate Professor Walsh.

"By bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain, we're the first to show how people adapt their behaviour to a completely new environment."

The team's first project, Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment, or SQuARE, has now launched, with an experiment that creatively imagines for space the most basic technique for sampling an archaeological site: the test pit.

While earth-bound archaeologists dig one-meter squares to understand a site and strategize further study, the ISSAP team will use adhesive tape to define one-meter areas of the International Space Station and then use daily photographs to study how the spaces are used.

"Instead of digging them to reveal new layers of soil representing different moments in the site's history, we will have them photographed each day to identify how they're being used and how they change over time," explains Associate Professor Gorman.