German astronaut to become 600th person to fly into space
Source: Spaceflight Now
Date Published: 10/27/2021
Astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Matthias Maurer, and Kayla Barron flew from their home base in Houston to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Tuesday to begin their final few days of launch preparations before blasting off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the International Space Station Sunday. Three of the crew members — Chari, Maurer, and Barron — are first-time space fliers. Maurer, a German-born European Space Agency astronaut, will be the 600th person to fly into space, according to NASA statistics. Chari will be the 599th, and Barron will be the 601st person to reach space since 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched into orbit at the beginning of the Space Age. “I was the lucky one that got the round number, but we will all have fun in space,” Maurer said Tuesday after arriving at Kennedy aboard a NASA Gulfstream jet. “Being No. 600 in 60 years, it makes 10 persons per year,” Maurer said. “But I think in a very few years we will see an exponential rise of that because
