Rabea Patricia Rogge is an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, robotic researcher, polar scientist and private astronaut who flew on the

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Crew Dragon ''Resilience'', as part of the

Fram2 Fram2 was a private human spaceflight mission operated by SpaceX with a Crew Dragon spacecraft on behalf of entrepreneur Chun Wang. During the mission, Wang and his all-civilian crew— Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge and Eric Philips—wer ...

mission. She is the first

female An organism's sex is female ( symbol: ♀) if it produces the ovum (egg cell), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete (sperm cell) during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gametes than a male. Females and ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

astronaut.

Biography

Rabea was born in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and studied in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, specializing in arctic robotics. She obtained her

bachelor degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years (d ...

and

master degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practi ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

, currently pursuing

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

Norwegian University of Science and Technology The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU; ) is a public university, public research university in Norway and the largest in terms of enrollment. The university's headquarters is located in Trondheim (city), Trondheim, with region ...

in the Department of Marine Technology, where her research topic is Data-driven navigation, guidance and control for autonomous surface vehicles in harsh conditions. She has also been a member of the Swiss Academic Spaceflight Initiative (ARIS) and led a satellite mission.

Private spaceflight

In April 2025, Rogge flew to space as the mission specialist of the

mission of a

Crew Dragon Dragon 2 is a class of partially reusable spacecraft developed, manufactured, and operated by the American space company SpaceX for flights to the International Space Station (ISS) and private spaceflight missions. The spacecraft, which consi ...

spacecraft, the first human flight to a

polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...

. i.e., to fly over Earth's poles.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rogge, Rabea German electrical engineers German explorers German women scientists Women astronauts German women engineers Women electrical engineers 1990s births Living people ETH Zurich alumni 21st-century German women engineers Engineers from Berlin Scientists from Berlin