“This is a good thing for me,” Gerst told press group DPA in an interview, adding that his appointment for a goal in 2018 was also an critical pointer of trust from a USA and Russia towards Germany.
“I am shamed by receiving a honour to authority a International Space Station… we am quite looking brazen to contributing to one of humanity’s biggest scrutiny adventures: finding new horizons,” a wanderer told a European Space Agency (ESA) website.
According to a ESA, Gerst’s authority “will expected see Alexander operative with ESA’s Mares flesh dimensions machine, researching plasma crystals in weightlessness, and contrast new technologies to support ESA’s tellurian scrutiny programme”.
It won’t be a initial time that Gerst has bloody off for a debate of avocation hundreds of kilometres above a Earth’s surface.
The 40-year-old geophysicist from Künzelsau in Baden-Württemberg spent 6 months aboard a orbiting laboratory in 2014 and garnered a outrageous following on Twitter and Facebook with his updates about his scholarship experiments and life in 0 gravity.
During his 166 days on house a hire he orbited a earth some-more than 2,500 times, conducted over 100 experiments, and performed a spacewalk durability some-more than 6 hours.
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His time aboard a Space Station behind afterwards warranted him a Order of Merit Medal from President Joachim Gauck.
But he will be even some-more in a media spotlight as commander, following as he does in a footsteps of large amicable media personalities like Canadian commander Chris Hadfield or NASA’s Sunita Williams.
Gerst will be usually a second European to authority a hire after Belgian Frank De Winne, who now runs a European Astronaut Centre and praised a German’s “outstanding opening and high professionalism”.
SEE ALSO: German wanderer Gerst behind down to Earth
News of his appointment was expelled on a same day that Chancellor Angela Merkel visited a German Air and Space Travel Centre (DLR) in perfume to accommodate Gerst and associate ESA officials.
Article source: http://www.thelocal.de/20160518/german-astronaut-to-take-command-of-space-station