Hans Schlegel

Hans Schlegel is a German physicist and retired European Space Agency astronaut who holds a physics degree from RWTH Aachen University and researched semiconductor physics before his astronaut training. He was selected as part of the 1987 German astronaut group by the German Aerospace Center, later joining NASA Astronaut Group 17 and the European Space Agency in 1998. He flew two Space Shuttle missions, STS-55 in 1993 as a German payload specialist aboard the Spacelab D-2 module, and STS-122 in 2008, during which he performed a spacewalk to install the Columbus laboratory module on the International Space Station, logging almost 23 days in space in total.