Dirk Dries David Damiaan Frimout was born on March 21, 1941 in Poperinge, Belgium. He grad­u­at­ed as an Engineer in Electronics and obtained his Doctorate in Applied Physics at the University of Ghent. Afterwards, Dirk Frimout moved to Colorado, U.S. as a post­doc­tor­al researcher in an Atmospheric and Space Physics lab­o­ra­to­ry in the uni­ver­si­ty of Colorado, in Boulder USA. He also worked at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy until 1978. 

Dirk Frimout became an astro­naut can­di­date in 1977. He joined the European Space Agency in 1978, as senior engi­neer in the Payload Utilization Department of the Columbus Directorate. He was respon­si­ble for the ESA sup­port to the European exper­i­ments on ATLAS‑1. Frimout act­ed as crew and exper­i­ment coor­di­na­tor for sev­er­al European Experiments aboard Spacelab. He was select­ed in 1978 as back-up pay­load spe­cial­ist for Shuttle flight STS-45 (the ATLAS 1 mis­sion). 13 years lat­er, Dirk Frimout became Payload Specialist for the STS-45 mis­sion and became the first Belgian in space, on board the Atlantis Shuttle on March 24, 1992. He was respon­si­ble for the sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments car­ried out on board Atlantis. It was the first Spacelab mis­sion ded­i­cat­ed to NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth. During the nine-day flight, the crew aboard Atlantis oper­at­ed the twelve exper­i­ments that con­sti­tut­ed the ATLAS‑1 (Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science) car­go. ATLAS‑1 obtained a vast array of detailed mea­sure­ments of atmos­pher­ic chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal prop­er­ties, which con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to improv­ing our under­stand­ing of our cli­mate and atmos­phere. At mis­sion con­clu­sion, Frimout had trav­eled 3.2 mil­lion miles in 143 Earth orbits and logged over 214 hours in space. This Atlas‑1 mis­sion was com­plet­ed on April 2 with a suc­cess­ful land­ing at Kennedy Space Center. 

After this mis­sion, he worked in the Microgravity divi­sion in Estec.

Currently, Frimout is a retired ESA staff member. 

In 1994 he became the chair­man of the Euro Space Society, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion whose mis­sion is to moti­vate young peo­ple for sci­ence and space technology.

Dirk Frimout has authored more than 30 pub­li­ca­tions relat­ing to Atmospheric Physics Experiments, Crew Training for Spacelab, and Microgravity Experiments. Dirk Frimout was made ​“Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold” and also received the noble title of Viscount. 

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www​.dirk​f​rimout​.be
Wikipedia