About the author

Johannes Weppler

Johannes Weppler fell in love with space the first time he saw Captain Picard and his USS Enterprise on television. So it seemed only natural to embark on a degree programme in aerospace engineering at the University of Stuttgart in 2004. He graduated as an engineer in 2011 after internships at Astrium (today Airbus Defence & Space) and CSIS in Washington, D.C., as well as exchange periods at the University of Virginia (USA) and the University of Strathclyde (UK).

Johannes Weppler’s first contact with DLR was in 2010/2011, when he and some fellow students took part in the REXUS programme. Their experiment focused on space fuels and was launched aboard a small rocket that took off from Kiruna, Sweden, in February 2011. The space enthusiast has worked in the Department of Human Spaceflight, ISS and Exploration at the DLR Space Administration since 2012, where he is now in charge of the National Projects workgroup. He is the ICARUS project manager for the ‘horizons’ mission, oversees the ‘High-flyers’ programme and frequently liaises with media representatives.

Posts from Johannes Weppler

Space | 23. August 2018

Nocturnal thrills – a tale of an EVA, live from Moscow

It is 01:28 on 16 August 2018, and applause has suddenly broken out in the MCC-M, the Russian control centre for the International Space Station (ISS). The room is full of happy faces. The ICARUS antenna, which will be used to track animals from space, has just been successfully installed on the exterior of the Russian Zvezda module on the ISS. read more

Space | 28. June 2018

From Stuttgart to the ISS – the arduous journey of a student experiment

The 'horizons' mission is very exciting – not just for us, the members of the DLR mission team. It is also a fascinating time for student groups from the universities of Stuttgart, Duisburg-Essen and Frankfurt – all of them winners of the ‘High-flyers’ competition, which was organised by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft; DPG) in 2016. read more

Space | 04. December 2014

Einmal Umlaufbahn und zurück

Der Start am heutigen Donnerstag wurde aufgrund technischer Probleme mit ein paar Ventilen auf morgen (Freitag, 05.12.) 13:05 Uhr MEZ verschoben.

"Einmal Umlaufbahn und zurück" - so könnte das Motto für den wichtigen Raketenstart lauten, den die NASA heute Mittag durchführen wird. Für die NASA ist es der erste Schritt zu ihrem großen Ziel, irgendwann einmal Astronauten zum Mars zu schicken. read more

Space | 18. September 2013

Premiere für den Cygnus-Raumfrachter

Den Menschen zu ermöglichen, die Welt mit anderen Augen zu sehen: Das war das Ziel von Carl Friedrich Zeiss, als er 1847 mit dem Bau von Mikroskopen startete. Das Unternehmen, das daraus hervorging, ist auch heute noch ein Inbegriff für Technologie "Made in Germany". read more