The Most Famous

ASTRONAUTS from Germany

This page contains a list of the greatest German Astronauts. The pantheon dataset contains 556 Astronauts, 11 of which were born in Germany. This makes Germany the birth place of the 6th most number of Astronauts behind China, and Japan.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Astronauts of all time. This list of famous German Astronauts is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Astronauts.

1. Sigmund Jähn (1937 - 2019)

With an HPI of 60.64, Sigmund Jähn is the most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 43 different languages on wikipedia.

Sigmund Werner Paul Jähn (German: [jɛ:n]; 13 February 1937 – 21 September 2019) was a German pilot, cosmonaut, and Generalmajor (equivalent to a Brigadier General in Western armies) in the National People's Army of the GDR. He was the first German to fly into space as part of the Soviet Union's Interkosmos program in 1978.

2. Ulf Merbold (b. 1941)

With an HPI of 50.17, Ulf Merbold is the 2nd most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Ulf Dietrich Merbold (German: [ʊlf ˈdiːtrɪç ˈmɛrbɔlt]; 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 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.

3. Thomas Reiter (b. 1958)

With an HPI of 49.72, Thomas Reiter is the 3rd most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 30 different languages.

Thomas Arthur Reiter (born 23 May 1958 in Frankfurt, West Germany) is a retired European astronaut and is a Brigadier General in the German Air Force currently working as ESA Interagency Coordinator and Advisor to the Director General at the European Space Agency (ESA). He was one of the top 25 astronauts in terms of total time in space. With his wife and two sons he lives near Oldenburg in Lower Saxony.

4. Hans Schlegel (b. 1951)

With an HPI of 45.98, Hans Schlegel is the 4th most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Hans Wilhelm Schlegel (Überlingen, 3 August 1951) is a German physicist, a former ESA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions.

5. Ernst Messerschmid (b. 1945)

With an HPI of 44.96, Ernst Messerschmid is the 5th most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Ernst Willi Messerschmid (born 21 May 1945) is a German physicist and former astronaut. Born in Reutlingen, Germany, Messerschmid finished the Technisches Gymnasium in Stuttgart in 1965. After two years of military service he studied physics at the University of Tübingen and Bonn, receiving a Diplom degree in 1972 and doctorate in 1976. From 1970 to 1975 he was also a visiting scientist at the CERN in Geneva, working on proton beams in accelerators and plasmas. From 1975 to 1976 he worked at the University of Freiburg and the Brookhaven National Laboratory (New York), In 1977, he joined DESY in Hamburg to work on the beam optics of the PETRA storage ring. From 1978 to 1982, he worked at the DFVLR (the precursor of the DLR) in the Institute of Communications Technology in Oberpfaffenhofen on space-borne communications. In 1983, he was selected as one of the astronauts for the first German Spacelab mission D-1. He flew as a payload specialist on STS-61-A in 1985, spending over 168 hours in space. After his spaceflight he became a professor at the Institut für Raumfahrtsysteme at the University of Stuttgart. From 2000 to 2004, he was head of the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne. In January 2005, he returned to the University of Stuttgart teaching on subjects of Astronautics and Space Stations.

6. Jean-Jacques Favier (1949 - 2023)

With an HPI of 44.50, Jean-Jacques Favier is the 6th most famous German Astronaut. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Jean-Jacques Favier (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ ʒak favje]; 13 April 1949 – 19 March 2023) was a German-born French engineer and a CNES astronaut who flew aboard the STS-78 NASA Space Shuttle mission in 1996. Favier was due to fly aboard the doomed Columbia mission in 2003 (STS-107), but later opted out of the mission. Jean-Jacques Favier was deputy director for space technology and deputy director for advanced concepts and strategy at CNES, director of the Solidification Laboratory at the French Atomic Energy Commission and research program director at the International Space University.

7. Jasmin Moghbeli (b. 1983)

With an HPI of 43.80, Jasmin Moghbeli is the 7th most famous German Astronaut. Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Jasmin Moghbeli (born June 24, 1983) is an American U.S. Marine Corps test pilot and NASA astronaut. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Naval Postgraduate School, and Naval Test Pilot School. Moghbeli was mission commander for SpaceX Crew-7 and flight engineer aboard the International Space Station for Expedition 69/70.

People

Pantheon has 13 people classified as German astronauts born between 1937 and 1983. Of these 13, 11 (84.62%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living German astronauts include Ulf Merbold, Thomas Reiter, and Hans Schlegel. The most famous deceased German astronauts include Sigmund Jähn, and Jean-Jacques Favier. As of April 2024, 2 new German astronauts have been added to Pantheon including Jasmin Moghbeli, and Matthias Maurer.