André Kuipers

Did You Know?

• During his DELTA mission, Kuipers conducted 21 experiments including the Seeds in Space experiment, cooperating with Dutch primary school children.
• He was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion on 15 October 2012.

Space flight experience

Kuipers has flown two space missions: the DELTA mission in 2004 and the PromISSe mission on Expeditions 30 and 31. In May 2009, he served as the backup of Belgian astronaut Frank de Winne, who later became the Expedition 21 commander. For his first flight, Kuipers launched aboard Soyuz TMA-4 atop a Soyuz-FG rocket on 19 April 2004 with cosmonauts Gennady Padalka (Russia) and Michael Fincke (USA). The spacecraft flawlessly docked to the ISS two days later.

During the DELTA mission, Kuipers conducted 21 experiments covering physiology, biology, microbiology, medicine, technological development, physics and Earth observation. One technological experiment, part of the Arges project commissioned by Eindhoven University of Technology and Philips Electronics, involved more energy-efficient lighting. The best-known experiment, Seeds in Space, had Kuipers cooperating with Dutch primary school children to compare plant growth from orbit with Earth-based results.

Padalka and Fincke remained on the ISS for six months as the Expedition 9 crew. Kuipers returned to Earth nearly eleven days after launch on 30 April, joined by departing ISS crew members Alexander Kaleri (Russia) and Michael Foale (US), who thereby ended their six-month stay on board the ISS. For his second mission, Kuipers launched on 21 December 2011 on Soyuz TMA-03M with cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko (Roscosmos) and Don Pettit (NASA). They docked to the Rassvet module on 23 December 2011. Kuipers returned to Earth on 1 July 2012 when Soyuz TMA-03M touched down in the steppe of Kazakhstan.