Dr. Jan-Baldem Mennicken studied law in Cologne and served from 1963 to 1965 as junior legal official and judge at the Cologne administrative court. In 1966 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Cologne and worked from 1969 to 1971 as Assistant Head of Division for international research organisations such as CERN and ESO at the Federal Ministry for Science, Education, Research and Technology, followed by a secondment to the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs to serve on the Permanent German Delegation to the European Communities in Brussels as Head of the Division for Research, Euratom, Environment and Education. After three years as Head of Directorate at the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology he moved, in 1977, to Brussels to become Director General of the Euratom Supply Agency. In 1983 he returned to Bonn to assume different responsibilities in the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology, becoming, in 1986, Director General for Environmental Technology, Marine and Polar Research, Geoscience, Aerospace and Transportation Technology. In 1993 he was appointed Director General of the Deutsche Agentur für Raumfahrtangelegenheiten (Germany’s then Space Agency), which he headed until 1997. From 1986 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1997 Jan-Baldem Mennicken headed the German delegation to the ESA Council. In 1991 he was chairman of the Council Working Group which prepared the Munich Ministerial Conference. From 1993 to 1997 he also served as chairman of the European Coordinating Committee IGA for the International Space Station and as the European spokesman. He has been a member of the Advisory Council of the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna since 2004.