The German astronaut Matthias Maurer is expected to spend six months in space.
(Photo: dpa)
Cape Canaveral After around 20 hours of flight, the German astronaut Matthias Maurer arrived at the International Space Station ISS. The “Crew Dragon” with Maurer and his three NASA colleagues on board docked at the ISS early Friday morning (CET), announced the US space agency Nasa. There was still some technical work to do before opening the hatch. Then the crew currently stationed on the ISS – the NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and the Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novizki and Pyotr Dubrov, who have been on the space station since April – wanted to officially greet the newcomers with a “welcome party”.
Maurer took off on Thursday with his NASA colleagues Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron with the “Crew Dragon” of the private space company SpaceX by Elon Musk from the spaceport Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida. The flight of the “Crew Dragon” had previously been postponed several times – first because of bad weather conditions, then because of a “minor medical problem” with one of the crew members, and then another crew had to be fetched back from the ISS.
The 51-year-old from Saarland is the twelfth German in space, the fourth on the ISS – and the first to fly there in a “Crew Dragon”. On the ISS, the astronaut from the European Space Agency Esa will carry out numerous experiments for about six months at an altitude of around 400 kilometers and will probably also complete an outdoor mission. Maurer, who has a doctorate in materials science, is the 600th person in space according to NASA counting. The last time a German Esa astronaut was on board the ISS was Alexander Gerst in 2018.
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