Ulf Merbold was the first ESA astronaut to fly in space and the first non-American to fly on the Space Shuttle. He became an ESA astronaut in 1978 and was assigned to fly on the first Spacelab mission STS-9 (FSLP) on board Columbia, from 28 November to 8 December 1983. During his second flight he flew as Payload Specialist on Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-42 (IML-1) between 22-31 January 1992. His third spaceflight, Euromir'94, took him on a 32-day mission to the Russian Space Station MIR from 3 October to 4 November 1994, making him the first ESA astronaut to fly to the MIR space station.
