Ulf Merbold

Ulf Merbold.
Ulf Merbold (born 1941) is a German physicist and astronaut. After growing up in East Germany, he studied physics at the University of Stuttgart in West Germany. In 1977, he applied to become one of the first astronauts of the European Space Agency (ESA), and started astronaut training with NASA in 1978. On November 28, 1983, Merbold became the first West German in space and the first non-American to fly on a NASA spacecraft when he flew aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as a payload specialist of the STS-9 mission. He participated in two further space flights, the STS-42 NASA mission in 1992 and a Euromir mission to the Russian space station Mir in 1994. In total, he spent 49 days in space, where most of his work was related to performing experiments in materials science and the life sciences. Merbold also provided ground support for other ESA missions and served as head of the German Aerospace Center's astronaut office. He worked for ESA until his retirement in 2004.