BZ-INTERVIEW with the astronaut Suzanna Randall, who wishes to be able to set off into space soon.
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Dhis year the first female German astronaut is to fly to the international space station ISS for two weeks. Suzanna Randall is currently being trained for this. She spoke to BZ author Marion Klötzer about her big dream and training.
BZ: Ms. Randall, you accidentally came across an advertisement on the Internet: Astronaut wanted! Why did you apply?
Randall: I’ve wanted to be an astronaut for as long as I can remember. See the earth from above, float weightlessly in space – I imagine that to be incredibly exciting.
BZ: What tests did you do?
Randall: The selection took a whole year. We first had to pass tests in physics, English, technology, concentration and memory on the computer. Then we looked at how well we work together with other people and whether we can stay cool even under stress. In the end, we were examined by many doctors to see whether we were healthy.
BZ: What are you training now?
Randall: We are two astronauts on the team, Insa Thiele-Eich and I, and we train all sorts of things: flying small planes, diving, getting to know weightlessness during parabolic flights, experiencing in a centrifuge what a rocket launch feels like. Next we will go into a cave and live there cut off from the outside world for a few days. But we also have to learn a lot: how a rocket flies or where the air on the space station comes from.
BZ: What does this mission want to explore?
Randall: We want to find out how weightlessness in space affects our bodies – we also had to learn to draw blood from ourselves!
BZ: How does a day on the space station look like?
Randall: A day on the ISS is completely clocked: eight hours of sleep, quickly getting ready and having breakfast, and then carrying out scientific experiments all day. In the evenings, the team has some free time, in which they can eat together, enjoy the great view of the earth or talk to the family on earth. And every day two hours of exercise are on the schedule so that the body does not become too weak in weightlessness!
BZ: Only one woman can fly into space this year. Would you be very disappointed if it didn’t work out?
Randall: Of course we both want to go into space! But for us the most important thing is that one of us flies at all. We are a team, the other is definitely part of her thoughts. ________
Suzanna Randall was born in Cologne in 1979 and is an astrophysicist. She researches stars and works in Chile with the largest telescopes in the world.
INFO: ISS
The International Space Station (ISS) is made up of 16 states
operated and is the only space station and the largest man-made object in space. It weighs 420 tons and is 109x51x73 meters. At an altitude of 400 kilometers, it circles the earth once in about 93 minutes.
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