Michaela Benthaus
German aerospace engineer
Michaela "Michi" Benthaus is a German aerospace engineer who became the first wheelchair user to travel to space. She works for the European Space Agency.
Early life and education
Benthaus received her early education from the Nymphenburg schools in Munich, Bavaria. She then went on to study mechatronics for her Bachelor's degree at Johannes Kepler University Linz, followed by a Master's degree in aerospace engineering at the Technical University of Munich with focus on space and astrophysics.
In 2018, Benthaus suffered a spinal cord injury during a mountain biking accident, which left her with paraplegia at the age of 26. Since then, she has been a full time wheelchair user.
Career
Benthaus was enrolled in the graduate trainee program of the European Space Agency in the Netherlands.
In 2022, Benthaus flew aboard a parabolic airplane flight named the Vomit Comet, which provides an environment of near-weightlessness for a brief period. In 2024, she took part in a two-week simulated astronaut mission in Poland.
In 2025, Benthaus was accompanied by fellow German engineer Hans Koenigsmann in her mission to fly in outer space.
The public source identifies “Michaela Benthaus” as german aerospace engineer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Michaela, Benthaus and German.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q137204362. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2022, 2024 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michaela Benthaus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.