Rabea Rogge: Germany's First Female Astronaut Flies To Space

Rabea Rogge is making history as the first female astronaut from Germany in space. On April 1, she took off on a four-day mission called Fram2, aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience space capsule, alongside three others. The crew includes financier Chun Wang, Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, Australian scientist Eric Philips. 

Who Is Rabea Rogge?

Rabea Rogge, who is about 30 years old, was born in Berlin and pursued her education in Zurich. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering from ETH (Federal Institute of Technology) Zurich. She is also a PhD scholar at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in the Department of Marine Technology.

Rogge is passionate about studying data-driven navigation, guidance and control for autonomous surface vehicles in harsh conditions. She has also been a member of the Swiss Academic Spaceflight Initiative (ARIS) and led a satellite mission. On the Fram2 mission, she is the scientific director of the space flight, researching Arctic water drones.

More About The Mission?

On April 1, the four-member crew aboard Crew Dragon Resilience blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Chung Wang is the the commander of the mission, Jannicke Mikkelsen is the capsule commander, Rabea Rogge is the scientific director, and Eric Philips as medical officer. They will orbit the Earth at an altitude of around 430 kilometers in a polar orbit. 

This will be the first time that humans have flown over the polar regions in a low earth orbit (LEO). For the Elon Musk-owned company SpaceX, it will be the sixth use of the same first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and the sixth privately financed manned space flight in total. The crew will carry out at least 20 experiments, Rogge told the German news outlet Heise.

They will conduct many experiments on improving human health and performance in space. They will also attempt to grow mushrooms in near weightlessness. They will also study an optical phenomenon called Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE), a luminous band of hot plasma that occurs at an altitude of 400-500 km above Earth.