Wubbo Ockels, the first Dutchman in space, died on Sunday morning from kidney cancer in the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital in Amsterdam. He was 68.

Ockels, with degrees in physics and mathematics, was working at the Nuclear Physics Accelerator Institute in Groningen when he answered a small newspaper advert in 1977 for an astronaut at the European Space Agency. 

He was selected for training as a payload specialist and joined the crew of the Challenger in 1985, clocking up 110 Earth orbits and 168 hours in space.

After his astronaut career, Ockels became professor of aerospace for sustainable engineering and technology at Delft University.

Message

He was passionate about sustainability, leaving a final message on the subject in the form of an interview and a farewell letter published on Monday in the AD.

‘Let us greet “the human era” and stop destroying the Earth,’ Ockels wrote.

He said the industrial revolution has put humanity in an undesirable position, that nature has been damaged and people must change.

Ockels was an unlikely astronaut, according to André Kuipers, who followed him into space in 2012. ‘A Dutch, bespectacled scientist. If he could become an astronaut then there was hope for me,’ he told the Telegraaf on Monday.