He was appointed full professor of Spatial Technology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne on 28 March 2007.

[3] Unlike colleague Wubbo Ockels—who withdrew from training to focus on Spacelab and remained an ESA payload specialist—Nicollier became a mission specialist, the first non-American to become a full-time NASA astronaut.

[4] Nicollier's technical assignments in the Astronaut Office have included flight software verification in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), participation in the development of retrieval techniques for the Tethered Satellite System (TSS), Remote Manipulator System (RMS), and International Space Station (ISS) robotics support.

The crew deployed the European Retrievable Carrier EURECA, as well as the Tethered Satellite System-1, which was a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency project.

The nature of this repair was to correct a 2 nm error in the lens, which caused significant distortion of the images taken by the telescope.

[9] Following his astronaut career, he delivered a lecture on his experiences, “Revisiting Hubble,” at the first Starmus Festival in 2011 in the Canary Islands.

[10] Nicollier has received several awards and honors:[3] He is widowed (Susana Perez of Monterrey, Mexico, died December 2007).

[13] Nicollier made a cameo appearances on the TV show Home Improvement by Touchstone Television (Series 3, Episode 24, "Reality Bytes").