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Ulf Dietrich Merbold 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.
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science · German astronaut and physicist (born 1941) · astronaut · physicist · payload specialist · also Ulf Merbold, Ulf Dietrich Merbold, Ulf D. Merbold, Merbold
Born 20 June 1941 · Q215124
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Public attention spiked: 3,589 Wikipedia readers in one day, 115.8× the usual 31, with 1 article edits. Editors noted: dashes set incorrectly, and unnecessarily emphatic here
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DLR: Ulf Merbold during the Spacelab-1 mission
The asteroid 10972 Merbold was named after him
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Received an honorary doctorate in engineering from RWTH Aachen University
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Merbold served as science coordinator
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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
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Awarded Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia (1988).
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Was awarded the Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia
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Became head of the German Aerospace Center's astronaut office, and in April–May 1993 he served as science coordinator for the second German Spacelab mission D-2 on STS-55
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Awarded Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1984).
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Merbold met the East German cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, who had become the first German in space after launching on Soyuz 31 on 26 August 1978
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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)
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Ulf Merbold became the backup payload specialist for the Spacelab D-1 mission, which West Germany funded
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Awarded Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg (1983).
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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
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Merbold received the American Astronautical Society's Flight Achievement Award, together with the rest of the STS-9 crew
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The crew for the first Spacelab flight was finalized, with Merbold as primary ESA payload specialist and Ockels as his backup
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Merbold, Nicollier and Ockels went to Houston for NASA training at Johnson Space Center while Malerba stayed in Europe
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Merbold successfully applied to the European Space Agency (ESA) to become one of their first astronauts
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Merbold obtained a doctorate in natural sciences, also from the University of Stuttgart, with a dissertation titled Untersuchung der Strahlenschädigung von stickstoffdotierten Eisen nach Neutronenbestrahlung bei 140 Grad
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NASA and the European Space Research Organisation, a precursor organization of the European Space Agency (ESA), agreed to build a scientific laboratory that would be carried on the Space Shuttle, then under development
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And payload specialists were first used on Spacelab's initial flight
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Since 1969, Ulf Merbold has been married to Birgit, née Riester and the couple have two children, a daughter born in 1975 and a son born in 1979.
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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
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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
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From Theodor-Neubauer-Oberschule high school—now Ulf-Merbold-Gymnasium Greiz—in Greiz, Merbold wanted to study physics at the University of Jena
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And died there in 1948, and Merbold was brought up in the town of Greiz in East Germany by his mother and grandparents
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Born 1941-06-20.
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