Part 1 > 2 Chronology > 3 Space Glossary (soon)

German Mars Camera | The special high-precision 3-D camera attached to the robotic arm of the Phoenix Mars probe that landed successfully on the red planet on May 31, 2008 was designed by Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. See more below.

Germans and NASA: You may remember that German astronauts have been on board some recent NASA space shuttle missions, including Hans Schlegel’s second trip with NASA for the Columbus space lab module aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2008, the 2006 ISS mission, and the 3-D earth-mapping mission in February 2000. But do you know who the first German in space was? Well, neither do most Germans. But it happened in 1978 and the answer is in our Chronik der Deutschen im Weltall timeline.

With 46-year-old Dr. Gerhard P.J. Thiele on board the Raumfähre Endeavour for NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mapping Mission (SRTM) in February 2000, we introduced our Air & Space Travel Glossary (About.com). Below you’ll find some background information about Germans in space and links to related vocabulary and German-language (and English) Web sites.

Most people know that both the Russian and the American space programs would never have gotten off the ground as quickly as they did without the talents of the German rocket scientists they imported from occupied Germany at the end of the Second World War. (Wernher von Braun on the U.S. side is probably the most famous.) So it seems only fair that both the Russians and the Americans have invited Germans (and the Swiss Claude Nicolier) to participate in their space missions over the years.

The latest, European Space Agency (ESA) German astronaut in space was Hans Schlegel, who on his second trip with NASA — aboard the Atlantis space shuttle launched on Feb. 7, 2008 — helped install the Columbus space lab module aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Schlegel’s first space trip was in 1993 aboard Columbia. A former paratrooper, the German astronaut is from Aachen, Germany and has seven children with his wife Heike, also a former pilot and astronaut.

Thomas Reiter (born in Frankfurt am Main in 1958), flew aboard the STS-121 mission to the ISS in 2006. Previously, the German astronaut had flown for six months aboard the Russian Mir space station. Reiter flew aboard Discovery on July 4, 2006 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, docking with the International Space Station on July 6, 2006. After about six months aboard the station, he was replaced by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams in December 2006 when he returned to Earth. Today Reiter is on the board of the German aerospace agency DLR.

Gerhard Thiele was born in Germany on September 2, 1953. Thiele is married and has four children. A trained physicist, he began working for the DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the German Aerospace Center) and undergoing astronaut training in 1988. He joined the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1998 after going through NASA's Astronaut Candidate Training program at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

In addition to a German astronaut, the technology on board the SRTM mission was also German. The 3-D mapping flight was a cooperative project of NASA, NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency (USA), the DLR, and the ASI (Italian Space Agency). NASA was responsible for the development of the so-called C-band radar interferometer system. The German company Dornier Satellitensysteme GmbH (part of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (Dasa, Munich) was the main contractor for the X-SAR radar system used on the mission.

NEXT > Eine Chronik - Timeline

Copyright © 2003-2008 Hyde Flippo