Astronaut biography

Reinhold Ewald, Astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA)

Born 18 December 1956 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. He is married and has three children. He enjoys reading and spending time with his family, and performs with an amateur theatre group. He also plays soccer and holds a black belt in karate.
 
Education

Received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from the University of Cologne in 1977 and a Master of Science degree in Experimental Physics in 1983. He graduated in 1986 with a PhD in Physics and a minor degree in human physiology.

Organisations

Member of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physics Society) and the Association of Space Explorers. He is a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Special honours

Reinhold Ewald received the Russian “Order of Friendship” in 1992 and the Russian “Medal for Personal Courage” in 1997, awarded by President Yeltsin of the Russian Federation. He was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit (First Class) in 1997.

Experience

From 1983 to 1987 Reinhold Ewald was a research scientist with the University of Cologne on a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German academic research federation) research project to assemble and exploit a three-metre radiotelescope installed at the Gornergrat Observatory at an altitude of 3100 metres in the High Alps, near Zermatt, Switzerland. His research topics were the structure and dynamics of interstellar molecular clouds, which are thought to be the birthplace of new stars.

In 1987 Ewald joined DLR (German Aerospace Centre). He managed several projects in extraterrestrial science, including an airborne stratospheric observatory called SOFIA, and various experiments launched on sounding rockets from ESRANGE/Sweden. He then became the coordinator for spaceflight in DLR’s planning department.

In 1990 he joined the German national astronaut team and took up training for the German-Russian MIR’92 mission at the Cosmonaut Training Centre (TsPK) in Star City, Russia. As the back-up astronaut for the flight (17-25 March 1992), he served as Crew Interface Coordinator at the Russian mission control centre (TsUP) in Korolev, providing communications between the crew in orbit and the project management and scientists on the ground.

After the mission, he returned to Germany as the Deputy Head of DLR’s Astronaut Office and supported the D-2 Spacelab mission on board the US Space Shuttle (STS-55, April-May 1993).

In 1993 Ewald was appointed Assistant to the Director of DLR’s Space Programme. In this capacity he was responsible for extraterrestrial, spaceflight and microgravity programmes.

In 1995 he returned to Star City, Russia, to train for the second German-Russian mission MIR’97.

From 1998 to 2002 Reinhold Ewald has also been lecturing part-time on spaceflight operations at the Technical University of Munich. He has held lectures at the International Space University ISU, Strasbourg.

In February 1999 he joined ESA’s European Astronaut Corps at the European Astronaut Centre EAC in Cologne, Germany.

Reinhold Ewald has been the Crew Operations Manager for the two Soyuz Taxi missions with ESA astronauts to the ISS in 2002. As ESA’s Operations Manager from a duty station in ESTEC, Noordwijk/The Netherlands, he then directed the two nationally sponsored Soyuz missions in 2003 and 2004.

From July to December 2006, he was supervising as ESA’s Operations Manager from the Columbus Control Centre, near Munich, the preparation and flight operations for the first ISS long duration mission of an ESA astronaut named "Astrolab".

Spaceflight experience

MIR ’97 was the second German-Russian mission on board MIR (10 February to 2 March 1997). Ewald flew as a research cosmonaut on the Russian Soyuz TM 25 vehicle and spent 18 days on board the Mir Space Station. He performed experiments in biomedical and material sciences and carried out operational tests in preparation for the International Space Station. He returned on Soyuz TM 24.

Current assignment

Reinhold Ewald is presently heading the Flight Operations Division within ESA’s ISS Operations department and located at the Columbus Control Centre near Munich. In this function he is directing a team of ESA Mission Directors managing the 1E Columbus laboratory delivery flight of 2007 and the Columbus activities thereafter.  
 
Last update: 3 July 2007