Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman is an American chemist, an engineer, a former United States Air Force colonel, and a retired NASA astronaut. She is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, and departed the International Space Station on May 23, 2011, as a crew member of Expedition 27 after logging 159 days in space.
Shannon Wells Lucid is an American biochemist and retired NASA astronaut. She has flown in space five times, including a prolonged mission aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1996, and is the only American woman to have stayed on Mir. From 1996 to 2007, Lucid held the record for the longest duration spent in space by an American and by a woman. She was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in December 1996, making her the tenth person and the first woman to be accorded the honor.
Millie Elizabeth Hughes-Fulford was an American medical investigator, molecular biologist, and NASA payload specialist who flew aboard the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia in June 1991.
Helen Patricia Sharman, CMG, OBE, HonFRSC is a British chemist and cosmonaut who became the first British person, first Western European woman and first privately funded woman in space, as well as the first woman to visit the Mir space station, in May 1991.
The Cologne school massacre was a mass murder that occurred at the Catholic elementary school located in the suburb of Volkhoven in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany, on 11 June 1964. The perpetrator, Walter Seifert, also known as "Der Feuerteufel von Volkhoven", attacked the people at the school with a home-made flamethrower and a spear, killing eight pupils and two teachers, and wounding twenty-two others. When police arrived at the scene, Seifert fled from the school compound and poisoned himself. He was taken to a hospital, where he died the same evening.
The European Astronaut Corps is a unit of the European Space Agency (ESA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members on U.S. and Russian space missions. The corps has 13 active members, able to serve on the International Space Station (ISS). The European Astronaut Corps is based at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. They can be assigned to various projects both in Europe or elsewhere in the world, at NASA Johnson Space Center or Star City.
Katherine Megan McArthur is an American oceanographer, engineer, and NASA astronaut. She has served as a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) for both the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS). Megan McArthur has flown one Space Shuttle mission, STS-125 and one SpaceX mission, SpaceX Crew-2 on Crew Dragon Endeavour. She is known as the last person to be hands on with the Hubble Space Telescope via the Canadarm. McArthur has served in a number of positions including working in the Shuttle Avionics Laboratory (SAIL). She is married to fellow astronaut Robert L. Behnken.
Satoshi Furukawa is a Japanese surgeon and JAXA astronaut. Furukawa was assigned to the International Space Station as a flight engineer on long-duration missions Expedition 28/29, lifting off 7 June 2011 and returning 22 November 2011.
Samantha Cristoforetti, OMRI is an Italian European Space Agency astronaut, former Italian Air Force pilot and engineer. She holds the record for the longest uninterrupted spaceflight by a European astronaut, and she held the record for the longest single space flight by a woman until this was broken by Peggy Whitson in June 2017, and later by Christina Koch. She is also the first Italian woman in space. She took command of ISS Expedition 68 on 28 September 2022.
Alexander Gerst is a German European Space Agency astronaut and geophysicist, who was selected in 2009 to take part in space training. He was part of the International Space Station Expedition 40 and 41 from May to November 2014. Gerst returned to space on 6 June 2018, as part of Expedition 56/57. He was the Commander of the International Space Station. He returned to Earth on 20 December 2018. After the end of his second mission and before being surpassed by Luca Parmitano in 2020, he held the record for most time in space of any active ESA astronaut, succeeding Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and German ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter, who formally held the record for the longest time in space for any active or retired ESA astronaut.
Jeanette Jo Epps is an American aerospace engineer and NASA astronaut. Epps received both her M. S. and Ph.D degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, where she was part of the rotor-craft research group and was a NASA GSRP Fellow. She was chosen for the 20th class of NASA astronauts in 2009, graduating in 2011. Epps currently serves as a member of the ISS Operations Branch and has completed analog astronaut missions, including NEEMO 18 and CAVES 19. She is the second woman and first African-American woman to have participated in CAVES.
Kathleen Hallisey Rubins is an American microbiologist and NASA astronaut. She became the 60th woman to fly in space when she launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) on July 7, 2016. She returned to Earth in Kazakhstan on October 30, 2016, aboard a Soyuz. She was a crew member of Expedition 48/49 and Expedition 63/64 of the ISS. Rubins has spent a total of 300 days, 1 hour, and 31 minutes in space which is the fourth most days in space by a U.S female astronaut.
Pascale Ehrenfreund is an Austrian astrophysicist. Ehrenfreund holds degrees from the University of Vienna and Webster Leiden. Prior to becoming a Research Professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, she was a professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, Leiden University, and University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She was the first woman president of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and from 2015-2020, she was the CEO of the German Aerospace Center. Since 2019, she is the President of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and since 2018, she is the Chancellor of the International Space University (ISU). Since 2021 she is president of the ISU. The main-belt asteroid 9826 Ehrenfreund is named in her honor. She is the President of Committee on Space Research from 2022 to 2026.
Nicola Winter is a German reserve astronaut and former fighter pilot. Winter became the second female fighter pilot in the history of the German Air Force in 2007 flying both Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon in the German Air Force. In 2017, she was selected as an astronaut candidate for the private spaceflight organisation Die Astronautin, which aims to send the first German woman into space, but later withdrew from the programme. In 2022, she was named a reserve astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps.
Johanna Maislinger is an Austrian aviator and engineer, currently employed by with the German cargo carrier Aerologic. Since 2010 she has flown Boeing 777-200F freighters, initially as a First Officer, as a Senior First Officer from 2011 and as a Captain since 2018. She achieved wider media prominence in 2018-2020 when she claimed to have secured the necessary financial and logistical backing to go into space as a space tourist, on Soyuz MS-20, though she did not ultimately gain a seat on the mission. The Soyuz MS-20 mission launched 8 December 2021 without her on board.
Die Astronautin is a private German human spaceflight program with the goal of sending the first German woman into space by 2023 via a short-duration flight to the International Space Station. The program was launched by a German private initiative in March 2016, when it sent out a call for German women to apply for a mission to the ISS. The flight will be mainly funded by donors and voluntary financial aid and so far has not received any funding from the German government.
The 2022 European Space Agency Astronaut Group is the latest class of the European Astronaut Corps. The selection recruited five "career" astronauts, 11 "reserve" and one "astronaut with a physical disability". They are the fourth European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut class to be recruited, and the first since 2008. Basic training for the career group began in April 2023.
Suzanna Randall is a German astrophysicist working at the European Southern Observatory. In 2018, Randall was selected as an astronaut candidate by the private spaceflight organisation Die Astronautin, which aims to send the first German woman into space.
Carmen Possnig is an Austrian physician and reserve astronaut. After graduating from the Medical University of Graz in 2014, Possnig was a general practitioner resident in Vienna for a few years before working as a research medical doctor at Concordia Station in Antarctica for more than a year starting in 2017. Since 2020, she has been a doctoral student in space physiology at the University of Innsbruck. She was chosen as a reserve in the European Astronaut Corps in 2022.
Anthea Comellini is an Italian aerospace engineer and reserve astronaut. Comellini completed a PhD on space rendezvous at the Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, in France, with aerospace company Thales Alenia Space in 2021. She then worked in space navigation operations for the European Space Agency, and the following year, was hired for research and development at Thales Alenia Space. She was chosen as a reserve astronaut in the European Astronaut Corps in 2022.
