Matthias Maurer

Maurer studied at the Saarland University, Germany, where he received a degree in materials sciences. He also studied at the University of Leeds, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and holds an MBA management degree. He has been working as a researcher since 1999 and received his doctorate in engineering at the Institute of Materials Sciences of the RWTH Aachen University in 2004, with a dissertation on materials sciences. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling, photography, reading, politics, foreign languages, cycling and hiking. Maurer speaks fluently in German, English, Spanish, Russian, French as well as conversational Mandarin Chinese.

He was selected as an astronaut in July 2015 by the European Space Agency. Before he joined the European Astronaut Corps, he worked for ESA in Cologne on Lunar exploration projects and as a Eurocom International Space Station flight controller.

In 2014, he took part in the ESA Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising Human Behaviour and Performance Skills program and in 2016 he was part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 21 analog mission[1]. In May 2017, Maurer completed EVA training at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab alongside fellow ESA astronaut Tim Peake. In May 2018 he completed basic training and became fully certified to go to space.[2]

On 12 May 2020 he arrived at the Johnson Space Center in Texas alongside ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov for training amidst the COVID-19 pandemic[3].

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