My business trip into space

Franz Viehböck, the first and only Austrian ever to have been in space reveals very personal memories of the Austromir mission in the TU Graz blog. Sometimes I still dream of space. It's mostly when I'm reminded of the spaceflight, when I meet people from that time or see things which remind me of my stay in space station Mir. That was over 25 years ago and I still remember very well the hard preparation time for the Austromir mission. The training is usually harder than the actual spaceflight, something which has a calming effect in the real situation. The biggest personal challenge for me was learning Russian. Just before the launch on 2nd October I was unsurprisingly very nervous and tense.