Renate Brümmer

Renate Brümmer in 1993

Renate Luise Brümmer (born May 4, 1955 in St. Gallen , Switzerland ) is a former German space pilot .

Life

Born in Switzerland, Brümmer grew up in Bavaria . She lived in Germering , not far from Munich , and first attended the Kleinfeldschule. After five years at school, she switched to the Max Born Gymnasium there . Her special talent was shown in the subject of mathematics and she soon gave classmates tutoring. In May 1975 she graduated from high school and then studied physics and mathematics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich for teaching at grammar schools. She passed the state examination in the spring of 1981.

Even during her last semester, Brümmer found her desire to be a high school teacher no longer as desirable as at the beginning of her studies because there were too many applicants. That is why she decided to pursue further training. She applied for postgraduate courses at half a dozen universities in the United States offering applied mathematics or related programs. The University of Miami presented her with the most promising offer: a study place in meteorology with a focus on “numerical weather forecast”, combined with a scholarship.

Brümmer accepted the offer from the University of Miami and traveled to Florida in the fall of 1981 to study meteorology for a doctorate. She specialized in the areas of fluid dynamics, weather forecasting and remote sensing. In January 1986 she received her doctorate ( dissertation topic : "On the Use of Profiler Data in Limited-Area Numerical Weather Prediction"). After completing her doctorate, she took up a position as a scientist at the University of Colorado . There she worked at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences with the US weather service NOAA until she returned to the Federal Republic in February 1988.

Choice as a spaceman

German Astronaut Corps 1987 (Brümmer top right)

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.

1,799 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. These 236 applicants were subjected to a wide variety of knowledge and psychological tests. Only 9.7 percent (23) remained. The subsequent health tests (balance, circulation) let another ten candidates fail. In the end, 13 people (9 men and 4 women) prevailed. A jury, which also included the three veteran astronauts Merbold , Furrer and Messerschmid , finally selected the five candidates.

The then Research Minister Riesenhuber presented the five finalists to the public in August 1987. In addition to Brümmer, the doctor Heike Walpot and the physicists Gerhard Thiele , Hans Schlegel and Ulrich Walter joined the German astronaut corps from now on.

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 in Houston .

In 1992 the final choice to participate in STS-55 fell on Schlegel and Walter. Brümmer and Thiele were appointed as their substitutes. The meteorologist completed the training together with her three colleagues.

Return to the USA

During the D-2 flight she worked as a liaison officer at the DLR center in Oberpfaffenhofen . She then left the German astronaut squad and returned to Colorado in the United States in 1994. Since then she has been working at NOAA at the Forecast Systems Laboratory. Together with Walpot in Germany, she set up the international environmental project GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment). Today she is the Project Manager of the so-called FX-Net Program, with which PCs are to be connected via the Internet as computers for weather forecasting.

Renate Brümmer is married and has a daughter.

Web links

• Brümmer, Renate Luise on spacefacts.de