Field of Work
The Human Spaceflight and Exploration group performs research on life support systems and spacesuits. This includes all processes and technologies that keep humans alive, healthy and productive in space. This includes atmospheric control systems, waste and water management systems and concepts for providing astronauts with food during a mission. Using a combination of laboratory hardware and a custom simulation software, the group investigates which technologies can be employed to perform the necessary functions of the life support system, how they can be most efficiently combined into an overall system and how the individual components interact with each other dynamically. This also applies to the research the group performs on spacesuits and their life support systems, with a focus on thermal protection technology for spacesuits on Mars.
Personal Information
Claas Olthoff was born in 1984 in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He earned a diploma in aerospace engineering (2010) and a Ph.D. in astronautical engineering (2017) from the Technical University of Munich (TUM). For his dissertation titled “Dynamic Simulation of Extravehicular Activities” (summa cum laude) he received the Wittenstein Prize in 2018. Following paternal leave and a stint as a postdoctoral researcher at TUM, he was awarded a three-year fellowship from the NASA Postdoctoral Program, which he spent at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. In 2022 he returned to Germany to work as a systems engineer for Airbus Defense and Space, before joining the Institute of Space Systems at the University of Stuttgart as a full professor in 2024.
Contact
Prof. Claas Olthoff
Institute of Space Systems
Pfaffenwaldring 29, 70569 Stuttgart
Tel. +49 711 685 61571
Email