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NAME: Thomas Reiter
BIRTHPLACE AND DATE: Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 23 May 1958.
EDUCATION: Thomas Reiter has a Masters Degree in Aerospace Technology. He graduated from Goethe-High School in Neu-Isenburg in June 1977, from the Armed Forces University in Neubiberg in December 1982 and from the Empire Test Pilots School (ETPS) in Boscombe Down, England, in December 1992.
FAMILY: Married, two sons.
RECREATIONAL INTERESTS: Fencing, badminton, cooking, playing guitar.
EXPERIENCE: After completion of military jet training at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, Thomas Reiter flew the Alpha-Jet in a fighter-bomber squadron based in Oldenburg, Germany. He was involved in the development of computerised mission planning stations and became a flight-operations officer and deputy squadron commander. After completing test-pilot training Class 2 at the German flight test centre in Manching during 1990, Reiter was involved in several flight test projects and conversion training on the Tornado the following year. Reiter attended the Class 1 test pilot training at ETPS, Boscombe Down, in 1992 and his flight experience includes 2000 hours in military combat jet aircraft of more than 15 types. Thomas Reiter was also involved in European Space Agency (ESA) studies into a proposed manned space vehicle (Hermes) and development of equipment for the Columbus module, one of Europe�s main contributions to the International Space Station.
He was selected to join ESA�s Astronaut Corps, based at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany, in 1992 and the following year underwent basic training. Reiter was selected for the Euromir 95 mission and in August 1993 started training at TsPK (Cosmonauts Training Centre) in Star City near Moscow, preparing for onboard-engineer tasks, extra-vehicular activities and operations of the Soyuz transportation system. Euromir 95 experiment training was organised and mainly carried out at the EAC.
In March 1995, he was named as a member of Crew 1 for the Euromir 95 mission, along with Russian colleagues Yuri Gidzenko and Serguei Avdeev.
During a record-breaking 179 days on ESA's Euromir 95 mission, which started on 3 September 1995, Reiter preformed some 40 European scientific experiments and, as on-board engineer, participated in the maintenance of the Mir space station. He also performed two spacewalks (EVAs) to install and later retrieve cassettes of the European Space Exposure Facility experiments (ESEF). The mission ended successfully on 29 February 1996 with a landing in Kazakhstan.
Between October 1996 and July 1997, Reiter underwent training on Soyuz-TM spacecraft operations for de-docking, atmospheric re-entry and landing. He was awarded the Russian �Soyuz Return Commander� certificate, which qualifies him to command a three person Soyuz capsule during its return from space.
Under an agreement between ESA and the German Air Force, Reiter is now on an 18-month detachment with the German Air Force where he has the function of Operational Group Commander. He remains available to support ESA projects linked to the International Space Station and will resume his activities at the EAC in March 1999.
July 1998
Mir Expedition EO-17. Docked at the Mir forward port at 00:28 on 1994 October 6. The Mir crew of Viktorenko, Kondakova and Polyakov boarded Soyuz TM-20 on January 11, and undocked from Mir's front port at 09:00 GMT. The spacecraft withdrew to about two hundred metres from Mir and then redocked in a test of the automatic Kurs system, which had failed in Progress M-24's attempted docking. Redocking came at 09:25 GMT. Soyuz TM-20 landed 22 km northeast of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 04:04 GMT on March 22, 1995.
Mir Expedition EO-20. Crew commander was Yuriy Pavlovich Gidzenko of the Russian Air Force. Flight engineer was Sergey Vasilyevich Avdeev of RKK Energiya, and cosmonaut-researcher was Thomas Reiter of the European Space Agency. Soyuz TM-22 docked with Mir's front (-X) port at 10:29:54 GMT on September 5 and the hatch was opened at 11:01:23. On February 29 the crew undocked from Mir in Soyuz TM-22, and at 10:42 GMT they landed in Kazakhstan.
Sample cassettes installed in ESEF (European Science Exposure Facility).
Retrieved and installed material samples