Hans Wilhelm Schlegel

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Hans Schlegel
Hans Schlegel
Country: Germany
Organization: DLR / ESA
selected on 3rd August 1987
Calls: 2 space flights
Start of the
first space flight: 		April 26, 1993
Landing of the
last space flight: 		February 20, 2008
Time in space: 22d 18h ​​02min
EVA inserts: 1
EVA total duration: 6h 45min
Space flights

Hans Wilhelm Schlegel (born August 3, 1951 in Überlingen , Baden-Württemberg ) is a German astronaut .

Life

Schlegel grew up in the then independent Bensberg (now Bergisch Gladbach ) ( North Rhine-Westphalia ). In 1957 he started school and first attended the Protestant elementary school in the Refrath district before moving to the Albertus Magnus High School in Bensberg . From 1965 he went to the Hansa-Gymnasium in Cologne . During this time he spent a year as an AFS exchange student in the United States, where he graduated from Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs (15 kilometers east of Omaha ) in Iowa in 1969. A year later he passed the Abitur in Cologne.

Schlegel then began his military service in the Bundeswehr . He had volunteered for the army and was doing his service with the paratroopers . He was finally assigned to the company commanders course and left the troops in 1972 as a lieutenant in the reserve . In 1980, after a few military exercises, he was appointed first lieutenant in the reserve.

Schlegel enrolled at RWTH Aachen University in 1972 and studied physics. After his diploma, which he received in 1979, he stayed at the university. He worked as a scientific employee at the 1st Physics Institute in the field of solid state physics .

After seven years Schlegel switched to the private sector, went back to Baden-Württemberg and started working as a process engineer at the Institute Dr. Foerster GmbH & Co. KG in its headquarters in Reutlingen . In the company founded in 1948, which works in the field of quality assurance in the metal industry, he worked in the research and development department.

Astronaut activity

Spacelab D-2

Hans Schlegel and Reinhold Ewald, October 1995

In August 1986, what was then the German Research and Research Institute for Aerospace (DFVLR) - the predecessor of today's German Aerospace Center  - on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Research published a list of scientific astronauts in all major daily newspapers for the second German Spacelab flight (D -2) wanted. A university degree in physics , chemistry , biology , medicine or engineering as well as several years of research was required . In addition, a doctorate in the areas mentioned was an advantage. A good general mental and physical condition as well as excellent knowledge of English combined with an age limit of 35 years were required.

1799 national interested parties responded to the call, but only 40 percent of them met the required criteria. 312 applicants were shortlisted. After the first medical questioning about hereditary and allergic diseases or ametropia, another 76 had to give up. The remaining 236 applicants were subjected to a wide variety of knowledge and psychological tests. Only 9.7 percent (23) took this hurdle. The subsequent health tests (balance, circulation) let another ten candidates fail. In the end, 13 people (nine men and four women) prevailed. A jury, which also included the three old astronauts Merbold , Furrer and Messerschmid , finally selected the five final contenders.

The then Research Minister Riesenhuber presented the five finalists to the public in August 1987 (it was Schlegel's 36th birthday). In addition to Schlegel, the teacher and meteorologist Renate Brümmer , the physicists Gerhard Thiele and Ulrich Walter and the doctor Heike Walpot strengthened the German astronaut corps from now on.

Schlegel works outside the ISS (2008)
Schlegel, 2009

The five space flight aspirants began the actual astronaut training in March 1988 at the DFVLR headquarters in Cologne (the first “taster courses” had already been held beforehand - the group undertook its first parabolic flights in the USA at the end of 1987 ). In 1990, with the exception of Walpot, all of them were shortlisted as payload specialists for the second German Spacelab flight ( D-2 ). Since then, the four Germans have trained alternately in Cologne and in Huntsville at the Marshall Space Center and the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston . A year before the flight, the final choice fell on Schlegel and Walter.

At the end of April 1993, the two German physicists and five US astronauts went into orbit aboard the Columbia space shuttle . Walter and Schlegel supervised around 90 experiments during the ten-day flight, most of them from the fields of biology and materials science. They worked in the European space laboratory Spacelab, which flew for the seventh time in the hold of a US space shuttle.

Cosmonaut Schlegel / ESA astronaut

In 1995 Germany and Russia signed an agreement on the flight of a German spaceman to the Mir space station . Schlegel and his colleague Reinhold Ewald started preparing for the mission in the “ Star City ” near Moscow in autumn 1995 . Ewald was later appointed to the flight crew of the company MIR '97 and took off on board the Soyuz TM-25 in February 1997, while Schlegel took care of the flight from the ground as a substitute.

After MIR '97 Schlegel stayed in Russia, trained with cosmonauts in the simulators and received the certificate as "Second Flight Engineer" for the Mir station from the Russian space agency in January 1998. In the same year, the German astronaut corps of the DLR was integrated into the European astronaut corps , and Schlegel has since been part of the European Space Agency (ESA) like the other German space travelers .

At NASA

ESA immediately sent Schlegel to the USA. Together with the French Eyharts and the two Italians Nespoli and Vittori , he took part in training as a mission specialist at the JSC from August 1998. The ESA delegation trained with NASA's 17th group of astronauts and received their exams after two years.

Schlegel then stayed in the USA and continued to work in the JSC's astronaut office. Initially, he worked in the International Space Station (ISS) department. From 2002 he was responsible for the ISS radio traffic with other astronauts as CapCom , partly also in a leading position.

From summer 2006 Schlegel trained for the STS-122 shuttle mission , which transported the European Columbus space laboratory to the ISS. After the start date had been postponed several times due to technical problems with the shuttle's fuel tank, the mission was carried out in February 2008. As an alumni he remained connected to the exchange organization AFS from his youth throughout his life , he took its flag with him to the International Space Station. Schlegel was the last German participant in a space shuttle mission.

Private

Hans Schlegel is married to the current Lufthansa pilot Heike Walpot , who was also part of the DLR astronaut corps from 1987 to 1992, and has seven children, four of them from his first marriage.

See also

Web links

Commons : Hans Schlegel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Astronaut and AFSer Hans Schlegel. Retrieved on April 5, 2020 (German).
  2. ↑ The History of AFS. Retrieved April 5, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Schlegel, Hans Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronaut
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Ueberlingen , Baden-Wuerttemberg