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Alex Gerst with Elmo in 2019.
Alexander "Alex" Gerst (b. 1976) is a German astronaut for the European Space Agency. Gerst was part of the International Space Station Expedition 40/41 from May to November 2014, and returned to space from June to December 2018 for Expedition 56/57, as the Commander of the International Space Station. He holds the record for the most time in space of any active ESA astronaut (362 days).
On November 25, 2019, Gerst appeared on Sesamstrasse with Elmo for a "Wort des Tages" ("Word of the Day") segment explaining the word "schwerelos" ("agravic").
Sometime in 2018, NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold recorded an Elmotivation video from space which was posted on Sesame Street's social media feeds on October 13, 2018. In the video, Commander Alexander Gerst appeared on the International Space Station alongside his crew of ISS Expedition 56: Ricky Arnold, Andrew Feustel and Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, as well as Oleg Artemyev and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos.
In popular culture, some of Gerst's background and appearance is incorporated into the character of Alex Vogel, a German astronaut and part of the crew of the Hermes vessel in the 2015 science-fiction film The Martian.