European Space Agency (ESA)

SpaceX

This astronaut crossed the Kármán Line (100 km), the internationally accepted boundary of space.

Crossed Kármán Line

This astronaut visited the International Space Station.

ISS Visitor

This astronaut has spent over a month in space.

Space Resident

Matthias is a German European astronaut and materials scientist who holds several patents in the field of materials science and materials engineering. He applied to ESA in 2008 but was not selected as an astronaut until 2015. Crew-3 will be his first mission to date. ESA names all of its astronaut missions. Matthias' will be "Cosmic Kiss."

SpaceX Crew-3

Crew-3 was the third crewed operational NASA Commercial Crew flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft, and the fifth overall crewed orbital flight. This flight used a brand new Crew Dragon capsule named Endurance. The Crew-3 astronauts spent 174 days of their 176-day mission onboard the International Space Station.

Crew Dragon is the first privately built and operated orbital spacecraft capable of flying humans. As a reusable SpaceX capsule, it transports crew members to and from the International Space Station. It will also carry paying customers to the Station and low Earth orbit. While it typically accommodates a crew of four, this number can vary depending on the mission.

Crew Dragon

Matthias Maurer

Germany

Expedition 66 - ISS Quest EVA 3

NASA

STS-127 (Endeavour)

The third of three Space Shuttle construction flights to assemble the Japanese Kibo laboratory complex at the ISS delivered the exposed facility and Japanese robot arm. The 500th person reached space on this mission, with the crew giving the honor to Chris Cassidy. The flight rotated a single ISS crewmember.

The first reusable launch and landing spacecraft, the Space Shuttle began a new chapter of human space exploration. It launched like a rocket but landed on a runway like a plane. Shuttle crews deployed dozens of commercial satellites and two interplanetary probes to Venus and Jupiter. The Shuttle served as a mini space station and hosted hundreds of biomedical, psychological, physiological, materials science, and physics experiments that have directly benefited life on Earth. The five flight-worthy Shuttles -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions over 30 years. The Shuttles helped construct the Russian Mir space station and brought nearly 80% of the International Space Station to orbit. Shuttles also deployed and serviced the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space Shuttle

Soyuz TMA-07M

Soyuz TMA-07M ferried three members of the Expedition 34 crew to the International Space Station.

Soyuz is a human-carrying capsule built and operated by Russia, capable of transporting up to three people to the Space Station at a time. It has been upgraded numerous times since its first use in the 1960s for the Soviet lunar program and was the only crewed vehicle for the Station from 2011 to 2020.

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