question: Was Michael Foale or Ulf Merbold the first non_US citizen to reach orbit in a US spacecraft?
answer: Dr. Ulf Dietrich Merbold
context: Title: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  Passage: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit.  The US$ spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  The mission is managed by the California Institute of Technology, at the JPL, in Pasadena, California, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.  It was launched August 12, 2005, and attained Martian orbit on March 10, 2006.  In November 2006, after five months of aerobraking, it entered its final science orbit and began its primary science phase.  As MRO entered orbit, it joined five other active spacecraft that were either in orbit or on the planet's surface: "Mars Global Surveyor", "Mars Express", "2001 Mars Odyssey", and the two Mars Exploration Rovers ("Spirit" and "Opportunity"); at the time, this set a record for the most operational spacecraft in the immediate vicinity of Mars.  "Mars Global Surveyor" and the "Spirit" rover have since ceased to function; the remainder remain operational as of September 2016.
  Title: STS-63
  Passage: STS-63 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried out the first rendezvous of the American Space Shuttle with Russia's space station "Mir".  Known as the 'Near-Mir' mission, the flight used Space Shuttle "Discovery", which lifted off from launch pad 39B on 3 February 1995 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.  A night launch and the 20th mission for "Discovery", it marked the first time a Space Shuttle mission had a female pilot, Eileen Collins, the first EVAs for both a UK born astronaut Michael Foale and a US astronaut of African heritage Bernard A. Harris, Jr. and it also carried out the successful deployment and retrieval of the Spartan-204 platform, along with the scheduled rendezvous and flyaround of "Mir", in preparation for STS-71, the first mission to dock with "Mir".
  Title: USA-211
  Passage: USA-211, or Wideband Global Satcom 3 (WGS-3) is an American military communications satellite operated by the United States Air Force as part of the Wideband Global Satcom programme.  Launched in 2009, it was the third WGS satellite, and final Block I spacecraft, to reach orbit.  It is stationed at 12° west in Geostationary orbit.
  Title: Lunar Orbiter 4
  Passage: Lunar Orbiter 4 was an unmanned US spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, designed to orbit the Moon, after the three previous orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection.  It was given a more general objective, to "perform a broad systematic photographic survey of lunar surface features in order to increase the scientific knowledge of their nature, origin, and processes, and to serve as a basis for selecting sites for more detailed scientific study by subsequent orbital and landing missions".  It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data.  The spacecraft was placed in a cislunar trajectory and injected into an elliptical near polar high lunar orbit for data acquisition.  The orbit was 2706 x with an inclination of 85.5 degrees and a period of 12 hours.
  Title: FalconSAT-2
  Passage: FalconSAT-2 was a satellite built by students of the United States Air Force Academy as part of the FalconSAT programme.  It was intended to have been placed into low Earth orbit to study the effects of plasma on communications with spacecraft, however it failed to reach orbit due to a malfunction of its carrier rocket.
  Title: Ulf Merbold
  Passage: Dr. Ulf Dietrich Merbold (born June 20, 1941) is the first West German citizen and second German native (after Sigmund Jähn) to have flown in space.  He is also the first member of the European Space Agency Astronaut Corps to participate in a spaceflight mission and the first non-US citizen to reach orbit in a US spacecraft.  In 1983, he and Byron Lichtenberg became the first Payload Specialists to fly on the shuttle.
  Title: Kosmos 6
  Passage: Kosmos 6 (Russian: Космос 6 meaning "Cosmos 6"), also known as DS-P1 No.1 and occasionally in the West as Sputnik 16 was a prototype radar target satellite for anti-ballistic missile tests, which was launched by the Soviet Union in 1962.  It was the sixth satellite to be designated under the Kosmos system, and the second spacecraft launched as part of the DS programme to successfully reach orbit, after Kosmos 1.  Its primary mission was to demonstrate the necessary technologies for radar tracking of spacecraft, which would allow future satellites to function as targets.  It was the first solar-powered satellite manufactured by Yuzhnoye.
  Title: Byron K. Lichtenberg
  Passage: Byron Kurt Lichtenberg, Sc.  D. (born February 19, 1948) is an American engineer and fighter pilot who flew aboard two NASA Space Shuttle missions as a Payload Specialist.  In 1983, he and Ulf Merbold became the first Payload Specialists to fly on the shuttle.
  Title: Michael Foale
  Passage: Colin Michael Foale, CBE (born 6 January 1957) is a British-American astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut.  He is a veteran of six Space Shuttle missions and extended missions on both Mir and the International Space Station.  He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and until 17 April 2008, he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes.  He still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen.
  Title: Milan Panić
  Passage: Milan Panić (Serbian Cyrillic: , ] ); born 20 December 1929) is a Serbian American former Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, humanitarian, and multimillionaire businessman based in Newport Beach and Pasadena, California.  He served as Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1993.  During and after his time as Prime Minister, he campaigned for peace and democracy in the Balkan region.  He ran for President of Serbia in 1992, ultimately coming in second to Slobodan Milošević in an election marked by allegations of media and vote tampering by the ruling party.  Panić became Prime Minister of Yugoslavia while an American citizen.  The legality of retaining US citizenship while accepting this office has been questioned based on a Constitutional prohibition of a US citizen accepting office on behalf of a foreign nation.  Panić is the first US citizen to occupy a high-level political position in a foreign country since Golda Meir.
citations: Michael Foale Ulf Merbold