Yesterday there was the rather surprising news that former ESA astronaut Claudie Haigneré had attempted suicide:
First Frenchwoman in space hospitalised after suicide attempt
Paris (AFP) – The first Frenchwoman in space and former government minister Claudie Haigneré was hospitalised late Tuesday after attempting suicide, a French government source said.
Haigneré, 51, was rushed to hospital after being discovered at her Paris home, where according to another source, she had overdosed on pills. She was conscious when hospitalized, the source said.
Haigneré was an astronaut with the French space agency CNES, flying on a mission to the Mir space station in 1996 and to the International Space Station in 2001, the first European woman to do so.
She later entered politics, serving as minister for research and new technologies from June 2002 to March 2004, before becoming European Affairs minister in the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a post she held until May 2005.
She is married to another French astronaut, Jean-Pierre Haigneré, who flew on two missions to the Mir space station, in 1993 and 1999, the second for a six-month stay.
Although there is another report with her husband saying that the overdose was accidental (at the Le forum de la conquête spatiale, in French), so the circumstances are unclear as yet. I can’t understand why someone with such a successful career (unlike this writer) would want to take her own life as she would have everything to live for (she has a daughter also).
The news has been reported in a few spaceflight forums but – as with the case of Lisa Nowak (6/2/2007 entry) (whose trial is still ongoing) – there are some who get all sanctimonious about the topic and want to lock it.
