About the author

Reinhold Ewald

Reinhold Ewald

Reinhold Ewald studied physics at the University of Cologne. He completed his studies in 1983 and received his doctorate in 1986. During his work as a research associate at the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; DFG) from 1983 to 1987, Ewald already took a first step towards the stars. His research focused on the observation and analysis of the dynamics of interstellar molecular clouds, which are thought to be the birthplace of new stars.

After completing his doctorate, Ewald moved to the German Aviation and Spaceflight Research and Development Centre (Deutsche Forschungs- und Versuchsanstalt für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DFVLR), a precursor of the present-day DLR, as a research associate. Still fascinated by space, he worked on several projects, eventually becoming the Coordinator of Spaceflight at DLR within the Planning Department.

He was appointed to the astronaut team in 1990 and was also involved in the preparations for the Spacelab D-2 mission in 1993, where his compatriot Ulrich Walter was a member of the crew. On 10 February 1997, Reinhold Ewald launched into space as a scientific cosmonaut and spent 18 days on the Russian space station Mir as part of the second German-Russian mission, MIR ’97. He is currently an advisor to the ESA Director General’s Head of Cabinet at ESA headquarters in Paris.

 

Posts from Reinhold Ewald

Space | 24. May 2019

Reinhold Ewald visits AGBRESA participants – from astronaut to explornaut

The spaceship hatch is open, so pressure equalisation with the outside world has clearly already taken place. Standing before the :envihab facility in Cologne early on a Monday evening on my way to a special kind of ‘nauts’, namely ‘explornauts’, I feel as if I’m about to enter a space station. While Earth’s astronauts have not come much closer to their goal – the stars (astro-) – explornauts are in a comparatively better position. On the way to new inventions and discoveries, which explorers have always made, one does not always need impressive technology; sometimes a bed inclined down at the head end by six degrees is sufficient. read more

Space | 26. August 2014

German astronauts lose a friend and colleague

Steven R. Nagel, Pilot of the German D1-Mission in 1985 and then Commander of the D2 mission in 1993, died after losing his fight against an unconquerable disease. read more