Renate Brümmer

Renate Luise Brümmer (born 4 May 1955) is a Swiss-born German meteorological scientist and former astronaut. Specialising in satellite meteorology, she was selected as an astronaut in 1987, retiring in 1993, having never been into space.

Early life and education Brümmer received the equivalent of a Master of Science degree in mathematics and physics from LMU Munich in 1981, and a Doctorate from the University of Miami in meteorology and physical oceanography in 1986.

She had previously qualified as a schoolteacher and taught mathematics and physics at a secondary school. She also held a private pilot's license. :279 Brümmer was one of the five people in the first selection to the German astronaut team on 3 August 1987, as a payload specialist. neither woman ever went to space.

Brümmer completed basic training by 1990 with the rest of the German team, then undertook further mission-specific training across Europe and the United States. The crew for NASA mission STS-55 was selected in early 1992, with Brümmer and Gerhard Thiele being made reserves and trained for both flight and mission control; Walpot was named a crew interface coordinator and only trained for mission control. :224–225

For STS-55, in 1993, she was a reserve astronaut and supported the flying astronauts from the Oberpfaffenhofen control centre during the mission; if she had flown, she would have been the first schoolteacher to orbit Earth. :237 After retiring as an astronaut, she returned to Boulder, Colorado, to become a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. :238

She joined the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (CIRA) in 1995 at Colorado-Boulder. Initially, she worked as part of the GLOBE Program and in running the FX-Net project to deliver forecasting interfaces over the Internet. In the 2010s, she began working as a coordinator for the Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch, researching satellite applications.