Background Ulrich Walter studied physics and received his Ph.D. in 1985 in the field of solid state physics at the University of Cologne, Germany, with research visits at the nuclear research centers Jülich, Germany, and ILL Grenoble, France. Thereafter, he spent one year at the US research laboratory Argonne National Laboratories in Chicago and another year at the university of California, Berkeley, as a postdoctoral student. In 1987, he was appointed a member of the German team of science astronauts to fly the Shuttle Mission STS-55, April 26 to May 6, 1993, with 89 scientific experiments. In 1994, he headed the development of the “German Satellite Data Archive” of the German Remote Data Sensing Center of the DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany. 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 and as lead consultant for IBM Pervasive Computing software products.  Research Areas Since March 2003, he holds the chair of the Institute of Astronautics at the Technical University, Munich. He lectures and does research and development in unmanned and manned space technology and in systems engineering. His main research is in real-time space robotics, intersatellite link communication technologies, technologies for planetary exploration, and system  modeling and optimization.