In 1963, Russia sent Valentina Tereshkova, the first female astronaut into space, followed 20 years later by the\r\nAmerican Sally Ride. In 1996, Claudie Haignerè was the first French woman to go into orbit. Today, half of the\r\nastronauts in the United States are women. All of the eleven astronauts sent by Germany on missions into space were\r\nmen. In Germany, there are women with outstanding qualifications working in engineering and aerospace. And there\r\nare plenty of young talented people waiting for their chance. In German auditoriums, more than 300.000 women are\r\ncurrently attending lectures in so-called STEM subjects that include mathematics, computer science, biomedical\r\nscience and technology. This untapped potential now needs to be exploited and society must continue to attract\r\nwomen and girls to space and technology. We want to turn our vision to fly a first female German Astronaut\r\n(Astronautin) to the ISS in 2020 into reality. The project will be financed by crowdfunding, in-kind contributions of\r\nmajor players in the space field and sponsors from the business sector. The project pursues three goals: A female\r\nastronaut will bring new life to Germany’s aerospace sector. This female astronaut will be a role model who will\r\nencourage women and girls to set their sights on aviation and aerospace, as well as STEM fields in general. During\r\nthe mission, she will focus on conducting various scientific tests including medical experiments designed to examine\r\nthe female body’s response to zero gravity. A one-year selection process begun in April 2016, with over 400 female\r\nengineers and scientists applying. “Astronautin” is a completely new way of conducting a human spaceflight project.\r\n“Astronautin” is a pilot project for a new type of human spaceflight mission which follows the so called new space\r\nor Space4.0 movement that has been started by companies e.g. SpaceX, Xprize foundation, XCOR, Virgin Galactic\r\nin the United States. With the Astronautin project we demonstrate that this new way of conducting space projects is\r\nalso possible in Europe. Knowledge is gained through all phases of the project, which can then be applied to other\r\nprojects in the space or even non-space sector to aid in the establishment of future public-private partnerships .    «

In 1963, Russia sent Valentina Tereshkova, the first female astronaut into space, followed 20 years later by the\r\nAmerican Sally Ride. In 1996, Claudie Haignerè was the first French woman to go into orbit. Today, half of the\r\nastronauts in the United States are women. All of the eleven astronauts sent by Germany on missions into space were\r\nmen. In Germany, there are women with outstanding qualifications working in engineering and aerospace. And there\r\nare plenty of young talented people...    »