Everything Human Spaceflight

After around six months on the ISS, German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer has landed back on Earth. His fitness training in weightlessness with an EMS suit qualified by OHB was successful.

The U.S. aim to return people to the Moon by 2024. OHB is part of the Lunar Gateway project, which will provide humankind with a waypoint in lunar orbit.

By the time you reach 20, you feel grown up and have already experienced good things as well as not so good things in life but still have your best years ahead of you. Celebrating its 20th birthday in November, the International Space Station ISS can look back on a wealth of research experience in weightless conditions, contributing things that make life on the earth better as well as paving the way for our efforts to embark on missions to the moon and Mars in the future. At an altitude of some 400 kilometers above the earth’s surface, the ISS has been orbiting at speeds of around 28,000 kph ever since its launch on November 20, 1998, only ten months after the signing of the international agreement of all ISS-partners, carrying a considerable amount of OHB technology and knowledge with it. And since birthdays provide a great opportunity for revisiting the past, we would like to take you back to 2008, the year in which the European Columbus module was being readied for its journey.

Antonella Sgambati welcomes all visitors to her office with a warm smile. A system engineer with Italian roots, she has been with OHB’s Human Spaceflight Department (HSF) for seven years and clearly derives a great deal of pleasure from her job. After all, she deals with a lot of other people, a fact that is also implied in the name of her department, namely “Human Spaceflight”.

Have you ever done just under two hours of sport day for day over a period of six months? Inconceivable? Well, for Alexander Gerst, it’s part of the daily routine on board the International Space Station ISS. This is because the German ESA astronaut’s muscle and bone mass would otherwise deteriorate in the weightless conditions. We. Create. Space.