Alexander Gerst says he is proud to build on colleagues’ achievements
Alexander Gerst, a German astronaut, is to join the research team on the International Space Station in 2014, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) revealed on 18 September.
Gerst was chosen by the European Space Agency from 13,000 candidates for a 6-month mission to start in December 2014. He is scheduled to undertake research projects on the effect of zero gravity on humans, but also on medicine, physics and human biology.
“A busy but very exciting time lies ahead of me,” Gerst told Research Europe. “Before I go to the station I have to undertake two and a half years of training, most of which will be in Texas and Russia. I don’t think I’ll spend more than a few weeks in Germany before I get shot into space.”
Gerst passed rigorous testing to join the European astronaut corps managed by ESA in 2009. However, he says he now needs to be trained up for work on the ISS, which will include high-pressure diving and technical training. At the DLR’s German Aerospace Day in Cologne, at which his appointment was announced, he explained to space enthusiasts that this is why his training takes so long.
“If you want to go to the ISS as a tourist, you only need a few days of training if you already have the fitness you need,” he says. “But bear in mind it costs about $20 million.”
Gerst is the third German to work on the ISS, after Thomas Reiter in 2006 and Hans Schlegel in 2008. Gerst said he was proud to travel “on their shoulders”.
“It’s very amazing for me to think that I was chosen to continue this mission,” he says. “It’s going to be tough, but for me it’s a dream come true.”
However, Reiter says he hopes that Gerst’s mission will not be the last. “Times are tough and funding is short, so the future of human space travel by Europeans is difficult,” he also said in an interview with Research Europe. “Europe has excellent prerequisites for human space flights, but low budgets prevent decisions. But we are ready for when times get better.”
Mission 40, which is scheduled for take-off in December 2014, will include Gerst and two NASA astronauts, Steven Swanson and Gregory Wiseman. They will be joined by three Russian cosmonauts, Alexandr Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev und Fyodor Yurchikhi.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the DLR said that there were no plans to reconsider human spaceflight to the ISS despite an accident with an unmanned Soyuz shuttle earlier this year.
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