Die Astronautin

Die Astronautin is a private German human spaceflight program with the goal of sending the first German woman into space, on a short-duration flight to the International Space Station by 2021.^[1] The program was launched by a German aerospace company called in March 2016 and sent out a call for Germany woman to apply for a flight to the ISS, the flight will be mainly funded by donors and voluntary financial aid and so far does not receive any funding from the German government.^[2]

Mission[]

When the project was first established, they planned for the first flight of a female German astronaut to occur by 2020, although has been pushed back to mid-2021. The mission could take place on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft or one of two Commercial Crew Vehicles, either SpaceX's Crew Dragon or Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft. In October 2018 the project signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Axiom Space regarding astronaut training and flight opportunities, this could lead to the flight occurring on a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight contracted by Axiom.^[3]

Die Astronautin currently has selected 2 astronaut candidates, of those two one will be selected to fly the mission with the second serving as her backup, it is unclear if they plan for missions in the future.

Astronauts[]

The program put out the call for astronauts in March 2016, they received over 400 applications from German woman aged between 27 and 37, coming from STEM, military and other aviation backgrounds, by April they had narrowed the original 400 down to 120 candidates.^[4] One of the applicants who made it to the final 30 candidates was Austrian-German airline pilot Johanna Maislinger, who is now a client of the American Space tourism company Space Adventures, and is a candidate spaceflight participant for the joint Space Adventures-Roscosmos Soyuz MS-20 mission in December 2021.

One year after the original call for applicants, the project announced the final six candidates who had been picked from the original pool of 400. The six finalist included a fighter pilot, a meteorologist and four engineers.^[5][6]

• Major Nicola Baumann- A German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon pilot based out of Norvenich Air Base in North Rhine-Westphalia. She was born in Munich and had trained on fighter jets with the USAF in the United States.
• Dr - A development engineer with the Bosch company based out of Reutlingen from Nürtingen, Baden-Württemberg. She holds a PhD in Theoretical physics from the University of Heidelberg,
• - An aerospace engineer from Potsdam working at the aerospace engineering research department at the University of the German Federal Armed Forces in space debris removal. At the time of her the announcement she was working towards a PhD at the German Armed Forces University.
• Dr - An Astrophysicist from Cologne, at the time of the announcement she was working at the European Southern Observatory near Munich, she had also worked for the ALMA project in Chile and received her degree from the University of Montreal in Canada.
• Dr Insa Thiele-Eich- A Meteorologist from Heidenburg, working as the scientific coordinator for her alma mater, the University of Bonn, where she had earned her PhD in Meteorology. She is the daughter of former German ESA astronaut Gerhard P.J. Thiele, who flew on STS-99 in 2000.
• / - A German-Austrian citizen from Passau, she studied aerospace engineering at the Technical University of Munich and at the time of announcement she was working for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at the Galileo satellite control center in near Munich, controlling the European Galileo satellite navigation system.

Final selection[]

The next month the project announced their final two candidates, one of whom would fly the mission with the other acting as her backup. After over a year of selection the Thiele-Eich and Baumann were selected from the original pool of 400 candidates,^[7] in August 2017 the two traveled to Star City, Russia for their first round of training, which included Parabolic flight "Zero-G" training, medical training, Russian language, Thiele-Eich also trained to obtain her pilots license as part of the training, which was not needed for Baumann who was already a professional pilot.^[8]

In April 2018, the organisation announced that Baumann had pulled out of training with the project, her replacement was Dr. Suzanna Randall, who was one of the original six finalists.

References[]