Mathias Maurer will leave for the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday. Photo: Rolf Weinbernad / dpa
(Photo: DPA)
Along with his three NASA colleagues Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, he met Thursday evening “Amazingly, my colleagues and I, we are all extremely calm, very relaxed,” Maurer told a news conference on Friday as he attended the quarantine in Cape Canaveral. “I have to pinch myself out there every day because I feel like I could have expected more, that I’m completely terrified and nervous.”
Saarlander, 51, said the situation is also a “training success”. “We know exactly what to expect, we’re fully focused, we work through the processes and I think the excitement will be the latest when the rocket explodes.”
Maurer: “It’s getting really real now”
Along with three of her NASA colleagues Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, she entered the rocket’s tip-topped “Crew Dragon” capsule for the first time on Thursday evening (local time). “That was a moment when I felt like it was getting really real.” Otherwise, there is a lot of program on the plan even in quarantine. “We not only sit here and protect ourselves from germs, we also do various exercises and go through the process all over again until it starts.”
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Maurer and three of his colleagues are scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Spaceport and to the ISS on Sunday with a “Crew Dragon” from SpaceX, the private space company owned by Elon Musk. Maurer will be the twelfth German in space, the fourth on the ISS, and the first to fly there with a “Crew Dragon”. On the ISS, Maurer will conduct a series of experiments and possibly complete an outdoor assignment for about six months at an altitude of about 400 km.
