Franz Viehböck

Franz Artur Viehböck (born August 24, 1960 in Vienna) is an Austrian electrical engineer, and was Austria's first cosmonaut. He was titulated „Austronaut“ by his country's media. He visited the Mir space station in 1991 aboard Soyuz TM-13, returning aboard Soyuz TM-12 after spending just over a week in space.

Together with Clemens Lothaller, he was selected for the Soviet-Austrian space project Austromir 91. After two years of training he was chosen for the mission, and launched on October 2, 1991 together with the Russian cosmonauts Alexander A. Volkov and the Kazakh Toktar Aubakirov in Soyuz TM-13 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome spaceport.

At the Mir space station he conducted 15 experiments in the fields of space medicine, physics and space technology, together with the cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergey Krikalev. Viehböck returned after 7 days and 22 hours with Soyuz TM-12, and landed in Kazakhstan on October 10.

The following two years he gave numerous lectures on the mission, then went to the United States and worked for Rockwell. When Rockwell was taken over by Boeing he became Director for International Business Development in Vienna. Later he was assigned Technologiebeauftragter (technology coordinator) of Lower Austria.

Viehböck resides in Berndorf, Lower Austria. He is married, his daughter Carina was born during his space mission. Only two other space travellerd who became parent while on orbit is Mike Fincke and Randolph Bresnik (NASA).

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.