German_astronaut_team
German astronaut team
Representative astronaut team of Germany
The German astronaut team was established in 1987. Before the establishment of the team, then-West German astronauts were selected for single missions, or as part of the European Space Agency's crewed spaceflight activities. East Germany had its first cosmonaut, Sigmund Jähn; Jähn was both West and East Germany's first citizen in space when he departed from Baikonur in the Soviet Union in August and returned to Earth in September 1978.[1] West and East Germany reunified in 1990 and the astronaut team became representative of a single German nation.
In 1998, the team became part of the European Astronaut Corps.