Reinhold Ewald spent over 30 years in the space industry, with 18 unforgettable days actually living among the stars. In 1997, he flew to Russia’s Mir space station, where he conducted biomedical experiments, materials research, and soaked up all the knowledge he could about life aboard a space station. That experience proved invaluable when he joined the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1999. Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) had just begun the previous year, and European astronauts were preparing for their missions to the new station. Ewald played a key role, supporting his colleagues' space missions and helping to develop critical components for the ISS, including the Columbus space laboratory. He was on the ground when the Columbus lab launched aboard the space shuttle in 2008 and went on to lead its day-to-day operations with a dedicated team at the Columbus Control Centre near Munich. Did you know this about Reinhold? - Reinhold loves reading and spending time with his family. He played in an amateur theatre company, played football and has the black belt in karate. - As a scientific researcher, he built and operated a radio telescope near Zermatt in Switzerland. He investigated interstellar clouds in the universe, where stars are born. - In 2015, he became professor of space and space stations at the University of Stuttgart on behalf of ESA. He took over that job from astronaut Ernst Messerschmid. - In 1992, he trained as a reserve astronaut for the first German-Russian Mir ‘92 mission. He would eventually fly on the second German-Russian mission: Mir ‘97. - In 2004, Reinhold was in charge of the DELTA mission, flown by André Kuipers, from ESTEC in Noordwijk. - He cannot wait for European astronauts to go to the moon. To discover how it came to be and whether we can survive there.