With “Cosmic Kiss” , a long-cherished wish comes true for him: The Saarland native Dr. Matthias Maurer was the fourth German to set off for the International Space Station ISS on November 10, 2021 at 9:03 p.m. local time (November 11, 2021, 3:03 a.m. Central European Time, CET) . The 51-year-old materials scientist from St. Wendel has been a member of the astronaut corps of the European Space Agency ESA since July 2015 and was nominated for his first ISS mission on December 14, 2020. Matthias Maurer is also the second European to work as a mission specialist on board a SpaceX Dragon space capsule with the serial number 210 and the name “Endurance” of the commercial NASA crew program together with NASA astronaut Raja Chari ( Commander), Thomas Marshburn (pilot) and NASA astronaut Kayla Barron (mission specialist) to the space station. The four-man crew is brought to orbital height and speed in eight minutes and 48 seconds to begin their journey to the International Space Station. In the meantime, the first stage of the Falcon 9 launcher is slated to return to Earth for reuse.
Maurer is a member of ISS Expedition 66 and is expected to live and work on the space station until April 2022. More than 100 international experiments, including 36 from Germany, are on his agenda. The Falcon 9 rocket was launched from the famous launch pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Merrit Island, Florida. The US space agency used this launch pad back in the 1960s for its “Apollo” moon program.
“We are all very calm, that is definitely a success of the training”, said Matthias Maurer a few days before his start. “We’re very focused. When we’re in the capsule, the excitement will surely come. I’m not a superhero and I don’t want to be one, there are many, many people behind my work.”
The docking, i.e. the arrival at the space station, is scheduled for 22 hours after the start for November 11, 19:10 local time (November 12, 2021, 01:10 a.m. CET) and will be on NASA TV transfer.