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Zealand transmission
News from the NOS•yesterday, 20:52
Astronaut Lodewijk van den Berg died at the age of 90. Van den Berg was the first astronaut born in the Netherlands, although he had already been naturalized American at the time of his space flight.
From April 29 to May 6, 1985, Van den Berg was a crew member aboard the space shuttle Challenger of the American space agency NASA. Van den Berg conducted research on the effects of weightlessness on crystal growth. He brought a Zeeland flag into space in memory of his origin.
Van den Berg grew up in Sluiskil (Zealand) and studied chemical technology in Delft. In the 1960s he left for the United States and in 1975 received an American passport. Consequently, it is not Van den Berg but Wubbo Ockels, who went into space six months after Van den Berg, officially as the first Dutch astronaut.
‘You are hit’
Two years ago said Van den Berg told NOS how he experienced the launch: “They put you in that thing, they give you a pat on the back and the last thing they say is: have a good flight, we hope to see you again.”
He had to wait two hours for the countdown. “A checklist is being completed and you are listening to it. You don’t have much time to think about anything else, but at some point you wonder why you wanted to do it again.”
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Van den Berg still felt strongly attached to his native soil, he writes Zealand transmission. She came back every year for years. In 2013 a statue was unveiled in Sluiskil in honor of his achievements and in 2018 a school in Terneuzen, Lodewijk College, was named after him.
There is also an asteroid named after Van den Berg, which orbits the planets Mars and Jupiter.
