Gerhard Thiele | |
|---|---|
 Official NASA portrait | |
| Born | Gerhard Paul Julius Thiele (1953-09-02)September 2, 1953 (age 72) |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Space career | |
| DFVLR/ESA astronaut | |
Time in space | 11d 05h 39m |
| Selection | 1987 German Group |
| Missions | STS-99 |
Mission insignia |  |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Environmental science |
| Thesis | Ein kinematisches Boxmodell zur Auswertung der Verteilung anthropogener Spurenstoffe in der Warmwassersphäre des Nordostatlantik (1985) |
Gerhard Paul Julius Thiele (born September 2, 1953) is a Germanphysicist and a formerESAastronaut. He is the father ofDie Astronautin candidateInsa Thiele-Eich.
Born inHeidenheim an der Brenz, he attended the Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium inLudwigsburg. After school he volunteered for theGerman Navy, serving as Operations/Weapons Officer aboard fast patrol boats. In 1976 he began to study physics at theUniversity of Munich and theUniversity of Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1985 inenvironmental science.
From 1986 to 1987 he was a postdoc atPrinceton University. In 1988 he was selected for theGerman astronaut team and began basic training at theDLR. In 1990 he was selected as a backup crew member for the Germanspacelab mission D-2 (STS-55). During the mission, which took part in April 1993, he worked in the Payload Operations Control Center of DLR atOberpfaffenhofen as the alternate payload specialist.
In 1996, he was selected by the German Space Agency to receive Space Shuttle Mission Specialist training atNASA. In August 1998, he joined theEuropean Space Agency (ESA), into which the German national team was integrated. In 2000, he completed his only spaceflight, theSTS-99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.
During 2003 and 2004, he trained in Russia as the backup forAndré Kuipers on theSoyuz TMA-4 mission.
He retired from the European Astronaut Corps in October 2005.
As from 1 April 2010 he became Resident Fellow with the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna, Austria.
Gerhard Thiele has been appointed as the head ofESA's Human Spaceflight and Operations Strategic Planning and Outreach office (HSO-K) effective 1 July 2013.
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