Institute, Ockels supervised the practical work of first-year physics students at the University of Groningen.

In September 1981 Ockels withdrew from training to focus on Spacelab, and did not become a NASA mission specialist.

[1] He rejoined the Spacelab 1 crew for training as a back-up payload specialist to operate experiments.

Having served his role as back-up payload specialist for German astronaut Ulf Merbold, he took his place in Mission Control in Houston as the primary communicator between the astronauts working in Spacelab and the Mission Management Team in Houston.

At mission conclusion Ockels had traveled 2.5 million miles in 110 Earth orbits, and logged over 168 hours in space.

[2] The LadderMill is the response to the challenge for exploiting the gigantic energy source contained in the airspace up to high altitudes of 10 km.

In 2009, Ockels presented a talk arguing that the notion of time is human-constructed as a result of our interpretation of the effects of gravity.

[5] On 29 May 2013 it was announced that Ockels had an aggressive form of kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma) with a metastasis in his pleural cavity, and a life expectancy of one to two years.