Prof. Dr. Ulrich Walter

About Ulrich Walter

Ulrich Walter, born in 1954, is a full-time professor for astronautics at the Technical University at Munich, Germany. In 1987, he became what remains a dream for most people: an Astronaut. He took part in the D-2 mission (Second German Space Mission) from 26th April to 6th May, 1993, and orbited the Earth for ten days in the European space laboratory SPACELAB and with the space shuttle COLUMBIA. He writes the column “Wissen schafft was” for N24.

After his studies of physics at the University of Cologne, he spent one year at the US research laboratory Argonne National Laboratories in Chicago, then he went to the university of California, Berkeley, for a year as a postdoctoral student. In 1987, he was appointed to be a member of the German team of astronauts, and until the start of the Shuttle Mission STS-55 from April 26th till May 6th, 1993, he was trained at the German Aerospace Center DLR in Köln Porz, as well as at the NASA Space Center in Houston.

In 1994, he became project leader of the major project “German Satellite Data Archive” of the German Remote Data Sensing Center of the DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. In 1998, he went to the IBM Development Laboratory in Böblingen as a program manager in charge of development and consulting for IBM software products as project leader and lead consultant.

Since March 2003, Ulrich Walter is the chair for space technology at the Technical University of Munich and teaches and researches in the field of applied space technology and systems engineering. His focus is on real-time robotics in space and service robotics, especially robotics assistance for the elderly (geriatrionics). He researches and teaches systems engineering, the empirical science of developing and optimizing complex products and processes in companies. As a trained project manager, he advises companies worldwide, particularly in the area of quality and risk management.

Ulrich Walter is: Bearer of the Federal Republic of Germany’s First Class Cross of Merit, bearer of the Golden Wernher von Braun Medal, bearer of the Bavarian Order of Merit, member of the Bavarian Ethics Council, president of the Hermann Oberth Museum in Feucht, member of the Board of Trustees of the Deutsches Museum, mentor of the Ulrich Walter School in Stuttgart, honorary professor at the Dragomanov National Pedagogical University of Ukraine, Consultat Professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, honorary doctorate from the National Technical University of Ukraine, Kiev, Russia. He was elected “German Professor of the year 2008” in the class engineering sciences and informatics.

Media Activities

• From 1998 until 2003 he hosted the public science program MaxQ at Bavarian TV
• In 2011 he hosted the German TV series “On the Way through Space with Ulrich Walter” and other TV specials on National Geographic Channel.
• Since 2016, he hosts the weekly space documentary SpaceTimes in the German News Channel WeltTV evening program.
• Between March 2013 and December 2016, he wrote weekly science columns on the news webpages of German News channel N24.
• He is the author of six books, such as the illustrated book “In 90 Minutes around the Earth”, or the Spiegel bestseller “The devil is going on in the black hole”
• He has published more than 100 scientific articles in various international journals. He regularly publishes astronautic articles in public media.