Ulf Dietrich Merbold (; born 20 June 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut who flew to space three times, becoming the first West German citizen in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft. Merbold flew on two Space Shuttle missions and on a Russian mission to the space station Mir, spending a total of 49 days in space.

Merbold's father — a Wehrmacht soldier — was imprisoned in NKVD special camp Nr. 2 by the Red Army in 1945 and died there in 1948, and Merbold was brought up in the town of Greiz in East Germany by his mother and grandparents. As he was not allowed to attend university in East Germany, he left for West Berlin in 1960, planning to study physics there. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, he moved to Stuttgart, West Germany. In 1968, he graduated from the University of Stuttgart with a diploma in physics, and in 1976 he gained a doctorate with a dissertation about the effect of radiation on iron. He then joined the staff at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research.

In 1977, Merbold successfully applied to the European Space Agency (ESA) to become one of their first astronauts. He started astronaut training with NASA in 1978. In 1983, Merbold flew to space for the first time as a payload specialist or science astronaut on the first Spacelab mission, STS-9, aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. He performed experiments in materials science and on the effects of microgravity on humans. In 1989, Merbold was selected as payload specialist for the International Microgravity Laboratory-1 (IML-1) Spacelab mission STS-42, which launched in January 1992 on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Again, he mainly performed experiments in life sciences and materials science in microgravity. After ESA decided to cooperate with Russia, Merbold was chosen as one of the astronauts for the joint ESA–Russian Euromir missions and received training at the Russian Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. He flew to space for the third and last time in October 1994, spending a month working on experiments on the Mir space station.

Between his space flights, Merbold provided ground-based support for other ESA missions. For the German Spacelab mission Spacelab D-1, he served as backup astronaut and as crew interface coordinator. For the second German Spacelab mission D-2 in 1993, Merbold served as science coordinator. Merbold's responsibilities for ESA included work at the European Space Research and Technology Centre on the Columbus program and service as head of the German Aerospace Center's astronaut office. He continued working for ESA until his retirement in 2004.

Early life and education

Ulf Merbold was born in Greiz, in the Vogtland area of Thuringia, on 20 June 1941. He was the only child of two teachers who lived in the school building of , a small village. During World War II, Ulf's father Herbert Merbold was a soldier who was imprisoned and then released from an American prisoner of war camp in 1945. Soon after, he was imprisoned by the Red Army in NKVD special camp Nr. 2, where he died on 23 February 1948. Merbold's mother Hildegard was dismissed from her school by the Soviet zone authorities in 1945. She and her son moved to a house in , a suburb of Greiz, where Merbold grew up close to his maternal grandparents and his paternal grandfather.

After graduating in 1960 from high school—now —in Greiz, Because he had not joined the Free German Youth, the youth organization of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, he was not allowed to study in East Germany so he decided to go to Berlin, and crossed into West Berlin by bicycle. He obtained a West German high school diploma () in 1961, as West German universities did not accept the East German one, and intended to start studying in Berlin so he could occasionally see his mother.

STS-9 Space Shuttle mission

thumb|right|Crew of STS-9, from left to right: [[Owen Garriott, Byron K. Lichtenberg, Brewster H. Shaw, John Young, Ulf Merbold, Robert A. Parker|alt=Refer to caption]]

Merbold first flew to space on the STS-9 mission, which was also called Spacelab-1, aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. The mission's launch was planned for 30 September 1983, but this was postponed because of issues with a communications satellite. A second launch date was set for 29 October 1983, but was again postponed after problems with the exhaust nozzle on the right solid rocket booster. After repairs, the shuttle returned to the launch pad on 8 November 1983, and was launched from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A at 11:00a.m. EST on 28 November 1983. Merbold became the first non-US citizen to fly on a NASA space mission and also the first West German citizen in space. The mission was the first six-person spaceflight.

thumb|right|Spacelab in [[Space Shuttle Columbia|Columbias payload bay|alt=Columbia's open payload bay is visible above Earth. In the payload bay, a small white tunnel runs to a circular module.]]

During the mission, the shuttle crew worked in groups of three in 12-hour shifts, with a "red team" consisting of Young, Parker and Merbold, and a "blue team" with the other three astronauts. The "red team" worked from 9:00p.m. to 9:00a.m. EST. Young usually worked on the flight deck, and Merbold and Parker in the Spacelab. Merbold and Young became good friends. On the mission's first day, approximately three hours after takeoff and after the orbiter's payload bay doors had been opened, the crew attempted to open the hatch leading to Spacelab. At first, Garriott and Merbold could not open the jammed hatch; the entire crew took turns trying to open it without applying significant force, which might damage the door. They opened the hatch after 15 minutes.

The Spacelab mission included about 70 experiments, many of which involved fluids and materials in a microgravity environment. The astronauts were subjects of a study on the effects of the environment in orbit on humans; these included experiments aiming to understand space adaptation syndrome, of which three of the four scientific crew members displayed some symptoms. Following NASA policy, it was not made public which astronaut had developed space sickness. Merbold later commented he had vomited twice but felt much better afterwards. Merbold repaired a faulty mirror heating facility, allowing some materials science experiments to continue. The mission's success in gathering results, and the crew's low consumption of energy and cryogenic fuel, led to a one-day mission extension from nine days to ten.

thumb|right|Merbold on the flight deck|alt=Refer to caption

On one of the last days in orbit, Young, Lichtenberg and Merbold took part in an international, televised press conference that included US president Ronald Reagan in Washington, DC, and the Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl, who was at a European economic summit meeting in Athens, Greece. During the telecast, which Reagan described as "one heck of a conference call", Merbold gave a tour of Spacelab and showed Europe from space while mentioning (the beauty of the Earth). Merbold spoke to Kohl in German, and showed the shuttle's experiments to Kohl and Reagan, pointing out the possible importance of the materials-science experiments from Germany. On 7 May 1993, Merbold and the Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque were chosen as candidates to serve as the ESA astronaut on the first Euromir mission, Euromir 94.

Along with other potential Euromir 95 astronauts, German Thomas Reiter and Swedish Christer Fuglesang, in August 1993 Merbold and Duque began training at Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, after completing preliminary training at the European Astronaut Centre, Cologne. For one experiment designed to study the vestibular system, Merbold wore a helmet that recorded his motion and his eye movements. On 11 October, a power loss disrupted some of these experiments but power was restored after the station was reoriented to point the solar array toward the Sun.

Later career

In January 1995, shortly after the Euromir mission, Merbold became head of the astronaut department of the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne. From 1999 to 2004, Merbold worked in the Microgravity Promotion Division of the ESA Directorate of Manned Spaceflight and Microgravity in Noordwijk,

Personal life

thumb|right|Ulf Merbold in 2011|alt=Ulf Merbold with gray hair in front of a model of the Space Shuttle

Since 1969, Ulf Merbold has been married to Birgit, and the couple have two children, a daughter born in 1975 and a son born in 1979. They live in Stuttgart. Jähn helped Merbold's mother, who had moved to Stuttgart, to obtain a permit for a vacation in East Germany. After German reunification, Merbold helped Jähn become a freelance consultant for the German Aerospace Center.

Awards and honors

In 1983, Merbold received the American Astronautical Society's Flight Achievement Award, together with the rest of the STS-9 crew. He was also awarded the Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg in December 1983. In 1984, he was awarded the Haley Astronautics Award by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (first class). Merbold received the Russian Order of Friendship in November 1994, the Kazakh Order of Parasat in January 1995 and the Russian Medal "For Merit in Space Exploration" in April 2011. In 1995, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering from RWTH Aachen University.

In 2008, the asteroid 10972 Merbold was named after him.

References

Bibliography

  • ESA biography
  • NASA biography
  • Spacefacts biography of Ulf Merbold