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Rabea Rogge, a 29-year-old robotics researcher from Berlin, has made history as the first German woman to travel to space. After a four-day orbital mission aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule, Rogge and her three fellow crewmates safely returned to Earth, splashing down off the southern coast of California on Friday.
The privately funded mission, named Fram2, was commissioned by Maltese-Chinese billionaire Chun Wang and aimed to expand the frontiers of private space exploration and scientific research. The mission took its name from the famous Norwegian ship Fram, which carried early explorers to the poles more than a century ago.
Unlike typical crewed Dragon capsule landings, which usually occur off the U.S. East Coast, the Fram2 capsule made its descent into the Pacific Ocean for safety reasons, marking the first-ever manned Dragon landing off the U.S. West Coast. Live footage from SpaceX showed the spacecraft deploying parachutes before making a gentle plunge into the sea.
“Our goal is not only to overcome boundaries but also to create new opportunities for space travel and science,” Rogge told German news agency dpa ahead of the mission.
Rogge, a scientific specialist and robotics expert, was responsible for coordinating the mission’s research efforts. The crew, orbiting the Earth at altitudes between 425 and 450 kilometers and passing over the planet’s polar regions, conducted 22 scientific experiments. These included pioneering studies on the effects of microgravity on the human body, the growth of edible mushrooms in space, and the capture of the first-ever X-ray images from space.
The historic flight included an international crew: Chun Wang, who also joined the mission; Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen; and Australian polar guide Eric Philips. Rogge was invited by Wang after the two met during a training expedition in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.
According to the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Rogge now joins the elite list of just 13 Germans to have traveled to space, and she proudly holds the distinction of being the first woman among them.
