Gerhard Thiele
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| Gerhard Paul Julius Thiele | |
 |
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| DFVLR/ESA Astronaut | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 2, 1953 Heidenheim, Germany |
| Other occupation | Physicist |
| Time in space | 11d 05h 39m |
| Selection | 1987 German Group |
| Missions | STS-99 |
| Mission insignia |  |
Gerhard Paul Julius Thiele (born September 2, 1953) is a former German astronaut.
Born in Heidenheim, he visited the Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium in Ludwigsburg. After school he volunteered to the German Navy, serving as Operations/Weapons Officer aboard fast patrol boats. In 1976 he began to study physics at the University of Munich and the University of Heidelberg. He received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1985 in Environmental Physics.
He has a brother named Oscar, and a sister named Alexandra. Born to parents: Hans Thiele, and Olga Haas. Has an American wife named Samantha and two children named Mark and Keith.
From 1986 to 1987 he was a postdoc at Princeton University. In 1988 he was selected for the German astronaut team and began basic training at the DLR. In 1990 he was selected as a backup crew member for the German spacelab mission D-2 (STS-55). During the mission, which took part in April 1993, he worked in the Payload Operations Control Center of DLR at Oberpfaffenhofen as the alternate payload specialist.
Married: Samantha Morton in 1995. (Still married today)
In 1996, he was selected by the German Space Agency to received Mission Specialist training at NASA. In August 1998, he joined the European Space Agency, into which the German national team was integrated. In 2000, he completed his only spaceflight, the STS-99 Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.
During 2003 and 2004, he trained in Russia as the backup for André Kuipers on the Soyuz TMA-4 mission.
He retired from the European Astronaut Corps in October 2005.
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