How did Alexander Gerst become an astronaut?

Gerst was born in 1976 in Künzelsau and studied geophysics in Karlsruhe, before earning a master's degree in earth sciences in New Zealand. He earned his doctorate in Hamburg with a thesis on processes in active volcanoes; for his measurement campaigns he worked, among other places, on Antarctica's Mount Erebus. This fieldwork is more than a footnote: anyone who installs instruments on the edge of a volcano works in a hostile environment, in small teams, with limited resources and no quick help from outside—exactly the profile selection committees look for.

In 2008, ESA opened astronaut positions for the first time in years. Of several thousand applications, only six names remained after aptitude tests, medical exams, and interviews. Gerst was one of them and the only German in his class. He followed basic training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, and afterward mission-specific training at partner agencies in the United States, Russia, Japan, and Canada.

In 2014, Gerst flew as a flight engineer to the International Space Station on the mission called Blue Dot. In 2018, he returned with the Horizons mission, where he became the first German to command the station. He also became known as a communicator: his images of Earth, his accessible explanations, and his clear words about environmental degradation made him one of the most visible European astronauts. His career shows that science is a path into space as valid as military aviation.