NASA engineer, visionary, book author, ISS director, Leipzig native

"One day, private citizens will travel to the asteriod belt on their own with self-built spaceships to mine for minerals." Sounds like science fiction? Not at all! Leipzig-born Jesco von Puttkamer is already there, as Asteriod (266725 Vonputtkamer).

Prof. Dr. Freiherr Jesco von Puttkamer was the face of NASA on German TV for over 50 years, an icon as advisor to Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek - The Movie) and that strategist who promoted private space travel as founding director of the ISS space station. His seeds are now slowly sprouting 9 years after his death. This weekend, the first 100% private space flight landed in the Atlantic Ocean with a SpaceX Dragon and 4 crew members. Inspiration4 flew even higher than the ISS at 570 km above Earth. Long ago 2 private companies fly cargo to the ISS and one of them is even flying crew members.

For Puttkamer, it was "just a step in the right direction that we're going to look at very closely." He foresaw it when NASA, under his strategic planning, decided in 2006 to budget two young private space companies and gradually also supported them with engineers from the outgoing space shuttle program (COTS program).

Jesco von Puttkamer was born on September 22, 1933, at Salomonstraße 25 in Leipzig. The pastor of the Nikolai Church had to perform the baptism in the small apartment, because mother no longer dared to cross the Augustusplatz in view of the Nazi marches. He would have been 88 years old today, a number he would have particularly liked - Infinity. It is no coincidence that the 100th anniversaries of the sci-fi authors Gene Roddenberry and Stanislav Lem fall in exactly this period. It was these visions that Puttkamer picked up as a student and sci-fi author and then turned into science reality as an aerospace engineer and non-fiction writer. His biggest baby was the ISS, which he worked tirelessly on since Skylab and became its American director at NASA headquarters in Washington.

Few today remember the straightforward, outspoken, and tall man with curly white hair and a hauntingly deep voice. But his works live on in countless books and spaceflight successes. It was he who hired the colored Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) from the Starship Enterprise as NASA's ambassador in 1977, a novelty at the time. It was he who suggested christening the first space shuttle "Enterprise" and inviting the entire cast crew to its rollout, or equipping the first feature film "Star Trek" with NASA's "Voyager". In the end, he also brought the two space superpowers together, with the construction of the ISS.

Since 2001, however, the tracks of the self-confessed "desk astronaut" Puttkamer have led back to his Leipzig home. A talent development school he founded for young engineers now bears his name in the Anger district of the city. His "children" are internationally successful and are regularly invited to compete. The "International Team Award" has been presented in his name since 2013 and continues his legacy: "Shaping the future together internationally, doing our best to open up the closed system of the earth.

Anyone who has been on the ISS or works at NASA headquarters knows this tireless man whose name is an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. And anyone who wants to see it will have to wait until his 90th birthday in September 2023. Because then "266725 Vonputtkamer" is closest to the earth, will be illuminated by the sun and will be visible with a telescope.

Puttkamers students of many generations Puttkamer are organizing the 1st Internationale Space & Science Festival“ on Leipzigs expocenter beetween 1.-3.10.2021. They only follow his tracks into the asteroid belt.

Position of the asteroid: Tracking 266725 Vonputtkamer

Dim lights

We are looking for your ideas for the future!
Apply with your project, exhibit or ideas on the following topics: Climate and environmental protection, alternative energies, electromobility, CAD & 3D printing, digitisation and space travel.

Registration Festival: www.ISSFestival.com

The festival will take place for the first time from 1 to 3 of October 2021 and then annually as a part of the "Hobby-Spiel-Freizeit" ("Hobby-Games-Leisure") at the Leipzig Trade Fair. It will be hosted in the entire 20,000 m² exhibition hall No. 4 and will offer an extensive educational seminar programme.

We are looking for talented young amateur researchers and craftspeople who want to change their future with their wit, creativity, skills and present their work and ideas at the festival.

We offer an independent platform to present all applied projects, talents and those who want to discover them. We are always available both live and virtually!

Great prizes are in store for the winners, such as trips to NASA, training in the US SpaceCamp or Russian spaceflight, awards, certificates and prize money. The globally successful international NASA junior teams also invite you to the exciting "Beat the Rovernauts" competition.

All projects must be registered online and will be judged four times (preliminary written work, on-site oral defence, display of the exhibit, online audience evaluation). Each team gets a booth and their own time in the conference centre, as well as their personal online TV Channel! Participation in the competition is free of charge. An international jury and a pedagogical advisory board will be provided. Individuals, groups of friends, work collectives, societies and school projects can apply. The age range of the participants or teams is 6 to 19 years old. One supervisor over the age of 21 is required for each participant. Individual students or work collectives and teams can register online and upload written projects in German or English in PDF format.

The main topics are:
Climate and environmental protection, alternative energy sources, electromobility, CAD and 3D printing, digitisation and space travel.

We offer practical seminars, summer camps, workshops and excursions on all topics in the run-up to and after the event at the Jesco von Puttkammer School campus in Leipzig. Accommodation and meals are provided by the school's own Space Hotel.

This was a very special, innovative and silent year. We hope you all are safe and in good shape. Who else lost somebody to Covid-19, our deepest condolences.

International Space Education Institute transformed the most activities into online-curses. See more here in 2021. We are back!

Now we wish all a safe silvester and a Happy 2021.

Now join the live silvester concert of our houseband COSMIC NOISE CREW!

Traces of the space travel legend in Leipzig, which would have been 87 years old today
Leipzig, September 22, 2020

Prof. Dr. Jesco von Puttkamer (born September 22, 1933 in Leipzig, died December 27, 2012 in Alexandria / Virginia) was a German-American space scientist. Today a plaque in Salomonstrasse 25 commemorates the 1st Director of the International Space Station. As a student at the TU Aachen, the prospective mechanical engineer wrote sci-fi paperbacks about travel through space as early as the late 1950s.

1962 then Wernher von Braun called him to Huntsville / Alabama for the Apollo program. "Less than 48 hours passed since this telegram and the warm-humid air of the southern states hit my head like a wet sack," he wrote later. The small town in northern Alabama became the US moon rocket city around the Marshall Spaceflight Center. The 110-meter-high Saturn V still towers over the Dixieland valley from the Space Camp today. Visitors to the Leipzig Panorama Café sit at the same height. The newly qualified engineer Jesco von Puttkamer became a recognized engineer for the next 12 years with an office on the 9th floor of the first NASA administration building. He calculated the lunar orbit and landing sites of Apollo 12 and dealt with the reusability of the 2nd stage of the moon rocket Saturn V. During this time, he advanced from science fiction to science reality and wrote the most widely read books of the Apollo program.

In 1974 von Puttkamer moved to the NASA headquarters in Washington DC and headed the department for strategic planning of manned spaceflight (Space Operation Mission Directorate, SOMD). To introduce the new space shuttles, he connected Star Trek with NASA and advised Gene Roddenberry during his first cinema-movie. The first space shuttle was actually named "Enterprise" in 1976 and was presented by the Star Trek crew in Mojave. With Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), he roamed the Oktoberfest in Munich in 1975 and thus kept building new bridges before using her to recruit the new shuttle astronauts. The space shuttles, their successes and setbacks as well as the dream of an Alpha space station determined his working life in the 80s.

Since 1990 von Puttkamer, meanwhile with an honorary doctorate, has been involved in the construction of the International Space Station ISS and was its first director until his death in December 2012. Since the turn of the millennium and the first permanent crew onboard of the ISS, von Puttkamer was primarily committed to a gradual change in official space travel through services from the private sector after the Columbia disaster. SpaceX and Blue Origin's success goes straight back to its 2005 Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS).

It was precisely at this time that the professor was also involved in his old hometown Leipzig, first on the board of trustees of Mayor Tiefensee, then as a sponsor of young scientists. The founding and strategic guided the “International Space Education Institute” as nongov-association in Leipzig. Today this association cherishes his memory worldwide and named the "Jesco von Puttkamer School" after him exactly 4 years ago.

Over 300 scientists and a future indian-roots astronaut have already been initiated in Leipzig. At hundreds of units, summer camps and international competitions, the young people from over 30 countries with the Leipzig Puttkamer orientation have already successfully participated. The german team of the NASA Rover Challenge is currently still the reigning world champion. The mostly 12-18 year old young scientists are also extremely successful at the Korolev readings in Russia and at solar-contests in Germany.

Also in the new decade the doors of the Jesco von Puttkamer School are open to curious young scientists. Due to the pandemic, the association supports the technical working groups at the schools in the region if the distances and rooms are not sufficient. The campus area in Leipzig has a size of 2000 m², has a polytechnical center and hundreds of regional sponsoring companies. This is where the students designing, constructing, soldering, programming and 3D printing. The entire campus is climate-friendly and has the Children and Youth Environment Prize of the City of Leipzig.

On Saturday, September 26th, 2020 there will be an open day at 12 noon and interested parties aged 10-16 can register with their parents for technical workgroups and also try out a NASA Rover. The participants of the NASA Roverchallenge 2021 will also be selected by October 5th.
From summer 2021, 1-week hobby researcher holiday camps will be organized on the Jesco von Puttkamer Campus.

From autumn 2021 the Jesco von Puttkamer School is prepaering an annual International Science Festival on the fairground of Leipzig. The winners will receive advanced training courses at the US Space Camp in Huntsville, the former adopted home of Prof. von Puttkamer.

During his last lectures on the book “Project Mars” in 2012, he said: “One day private people will dig for ore on their own with self-built spaceships in the asteroid belt, if my name only circles the sun as an asteroid. But I'll be there. ”The NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory honored his life's work and named asteroid 266725 Vonputtkamer after him. Today, at 2.5 AU, it is twice as far from the earth as the sun and can be observed with a telescope between Mars and Venus.

Position: Asteriod 266725 Vonputtkamer
Jesco von Puttkamer Schule: www.spaceeducation.de