Hans Schlegel

Hans Wilhelm Schlegel (Überlingen, 3 August 1951) is a German physicist, a former ESA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions.

Schlegel, born and raised in Germany, graduated as an international exchange student from Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Hansa Gymnasium in Cologne before studying physics at RWTH Aachen University in his home country.

After having received his university degree, he conducted research in semiconductor physics before being trained as an astronaut in the late 1980s by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

He flew as a DLR payload specialist in 1993 aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-55, which included the German-sponsored Spacelab D-2 research module.

During the spacewalk, he completed the replacement of the Nitrogen Tank Assembly on the P1 truss of the International Space Station, and installed trunnion covers on the Columbus module.

Schlegel in Space