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Matthias Maurer starts into space
For the first time in three years, a German astronaut took off into space aboard the SpaceX “Endurance” space capsule. The engineer Matthias Maurer from the European Space Agency ESA took off on Wednesday evening with three NASA colleagues from the US spaceport in Cape Canaveral. The launch was broadcast live on the Internet by the US space agency NASA. After a flight of around 22 hours, the four astronauts are supposed to dock on the International Space Station ISS, which orbits around the earth in an orbit at a height of around 400 kilometers. Maurer has a PhD in materials science and had to train for years for the journey into weightlessness. He will live and work on the ISS for six months. During this time, he should carry out around 150 experiments and also complete an outdoor assignment. First of all, however, he wanted to take a look at the earth from the ESA observation tower, said Maurer.
The German materials scientist will spend six months on the International Space Station and carry out over 100 experiments.