German astronaut Thomas Reiter is to spend more than six months aboard the three-man International Space Station (ISS), starting this summer, the European Space Agency said Thursday.
ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration, Daniel Sacotte, recently signed an agreement on the mission with the head of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), Anatoly Perminov.
"The agreement covers the ESA astronauts flight in a crew position originally planned for a Russian cosmonaut", explained Sacotte, "and he will perform all the tasks originally allocated to the second Russian cosmonaut on board the ISS and, in addition, an ESA experimental programme."
Reiter is a member of the European Astronaut Corps, based at ESA's European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. Leopold Eyharts, from France, a member of the same corps, will be the back-up for this mission.
Reiter will reach the ISS on space shuttle flight STS-121 currently planned for next July, and return to Earth on flight STS-116 in February.
This will be Reiter's second long-duration mission on board a space station, following his six-month stay on the Russian Mir, 10 years ago, during the ESA Euromir 1995 mission.
