Last week, the European Space Agency launched its first drive to recruit new astronauts for well over a decade, with a strong emphasis on attracting more female applicants.
However, the next European woman in Space has already begun preparing for her spaceflight, and she will be launched under a privately funded initiative, taking a ride on a Soyuz rocket, to the International Space Station, in December this year.
A source at the Yuri Cosmonaut Training Centre, said, last week, "For the first time we will send up two tourists, one of them will be Johanna Maislinger. She is included in this crew as Spaceflight Participant Number One.”
When the 35 year old Austrian adventurer's spaceflight is officially announced, by American company Space Adventures, perhaps this month, will her story inspire other women, to apply to ESA, before the May 2021 deadline? Ironically, despite being a very experienced and versatile aviator, an engineer and holding a medical degree from a top German university, Maislinger does not meet the initial requirements to apply for the ESA call, which does seem a little harsh. But she is probably not too concerned.
It’s not a secret that here at the Space Sleuthing Blog, we’ve been following tenaciously the story of Johanna Maislinger and Soyuz MS-20, which she herself revealed to us, back in 2017, before deciding to take herself off the radar. At that time, she'd just been ejected from German Woman in Space project, Die Astronautin where she'd initially been allowed to participate, despite not being German. Indeed, when she embarked on the Soyuz project, it was initially a requirement of her Berlin based sponsor, that she gave up her Austrian citizenship, and became a German.
Soyuz MS-20 itself will be a unique spaceflight, as it is to be the first double space-tourist Soyuz mission ever. It is being flown solely because Space Adventures, currently still the only company to send space tourists or spaceflight participants, into orbit, and to the ISS, has been able to create the demand. It will be flown by a single cosmonaut, Alexander Misurkin, and the Soyuz controls have been re-engineered to facilitate this. The other Spaceflight Particpant may be a Japanese woman, but their identity has not be revealed, so far.
When announced in February 2019, it was billed as the first ever private manned spaceflight, although with SpaceX and Axiom Space also planning to fly non-professional astronauts, this year, or in early 2022, it’s unclear who will actually claim this cosmic ‘first’.
But Johanna Maislinger probably doesn’t care about those small details. A Boeing 777 captain, with Lufthansa associate, Aerologic, she is, on the face of it, a pretty smart woman. She sees a flight into Space as a logical way to combine her skills, qualifications and thrill-seeking nature. And she’s found someone who is prepared to pay around $45 million, for her to do it! A remarkable, and unprecedented achievement in itself.
Maislinger participates in a number of adventurous sports and she counts a number of Austrian and German celebrities among her friends. She has been unmoved by the online circus which has built up around her, since she claimed back in 2017, that ‘someone in Berlin is very interested to send me into Space', ignoring all media approaches and attention.
That ‘someone in Berlin’ has never been fully identified. Some sources in Germany have suggested that a company called Interstellar Ventures, run by Sebastian Straube, are behind Maislinger. Straube and his co-director have fuelled this speculation by refusing the make any comment. As mentioned, in 2017, she had claimed that she would have to take up German citizenship, to meet her sponsor’s requirements, and to become the ‘First German Woman in Space’. But, we know that she remains an Austrian national, at least according to documents shared with the Space Sleuthing team by contacts at Roscosmos, the Russian Space Agency.
For two years, from 2017, Maislinger’s claims seemed unlikely and rather absurd. Who would pay that $45million to send her into Space? And why? But, in July 2019, Space Adventures revealed that she was actually on their potential client list. A year later, in August 2020, Roscosmos announced that two Space Adventures clients had signed contracts to fly on Soyuz MS-20. Numerous well connected sources in Russia, including some inside Roscosmos, immediately confirmed that they understood that Maislinger was one of them.
Space Adventures official line is always the rather unconvincing 'we neither confirm or deny anything', but individuals contacts in their US office have, through their careless words and actions, given clear indications that Maislinger should fly on MS-20.
In September 2020 a TV production company, began shooting her backstory, initially shadowing her as she commanded a DHL-branded 777-200 from Leipzig to East Midlands and back. The TV company, KG Media Factory, later indicated that their filming was linked to the spaceflight project.
Soon after, one of her Aerologic flightdeck colleagues spoke to us about Maislinger, "There is some chat on our flightdecks about Johanna's plans, but I don't know anyone who has actually spoken to her about it. It probably wouldn't be fair to do that, at this stage"
Another aviation colleague said, "I can definitely believe that Johanna would love to do this, but how she'd persuade someone to pay such a vast sum of money. Good luck to her, if she has!"
Back August 2020, Roscosmos had said the clients for MS-20 would be named in ‘early 2021’. However, this has not yet happened. Maybe CoVid-19 travel restrictions caused some issues or delays.
Another possible factor, is that we know that Maislinger suffered some sort of mishap, in late 2020, in which she sustained multiple fractures. She returned to her job at Aerologic, in January 2021, but whether this incident impacted on her general fitness, or timely medical clearance from Russia, is unclear. We have asked Space Adventures about this aspect, but as always, their response was "No comment".
An enquiry to the very helpful Roscosmos Press Office, in mid-February was met with a rapid, but inconclusive response, that “The Soyuz MS-20 crew will be announced in due course, we have no additional information for you now.” However, they did acquiesce to the publication of this text.
But, in late-February, and on a more helpful note, an employee at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “As far as the flight of the Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft is concerned, there are no changes to the planned crew…. for the first time we will send up two tourists, one of them will be Johanna Maislinger. She is included in this crew as Spaceflight Participant Number One.”
A second source remarked, “She hasn’t appeared at our Centre yet, but she, and the other space tourist, will need to come here soon, to complete the Winter Survival Training. This will be essential, as the crew will be launched, and will land, in December.”
So, when will Johanna Maislinger actually appear at Star City, and keep her plans, and dreams, on course?
Will she update the tag line in her Social Media accounts that currently says ‘would love to visit the Moon…’ to 'I am going to visit the ISS...'
And, going back to where we started, will official confirmation of her plans help ESA's push to attract more women to their 2021/2 call for new astronaut recruits?
© Tony Quine February 2021
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