The world's largest artificial Sun started shining in Jülich on 23 March 2017. Johannes Remmel, the North Rhine-Westphalia Minister for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Consumer Protection, joined Georg Menzen of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie; BMWi) and Karsten Lemmer, Executive Board Member for Energy and Transportation at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), to inaugurate the new research facility Synlight.
Joachim Winter remembers his first train ride like it was yesterday: "It was from Lübeck to Travemünde on the Baltic Sea with a steam locomotive, third class in the passenger car. I was travelling by rail before I could walk."
On 19 March 1992, almost 25 years to the day, Klaus-Dietrich Flade became the first German to float into the Russian Mir space station as a cosmonaut. Flade, a trained test pilot and aerospace engineer, spent six days as a scientific cosmonaut on what was at the time the only human outpost in space, as part of the MIR' 92 mission.
How can space debris be captured? How can students reduce the rotation of research rockets in microgravity? The REXUS 22 research rocket was launched from the Esrange Space Center near Kiruna in northern Sweden, at 14:00 Central European Time (CET) on 16 March 2017. On board were student experiments to try and answer these and other questions.
From 14-16 March 2017, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is presenting current research projects in the field of fibre-reinforced high-performance plastics at JEC World in Paris, the leading European trade fair for fibre composite construction.
Just two years after its 'twin satellite' was launched on 7 March 2017 at 02:49 CET (6 March at 22:49 local time), the European Earth observation satellite Sentinel-2B set off on its mission on board a Vega rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
Huge masses of water once flowed over the surface of Mars to form one of the largest outflow channels on the planet – Kasei Valles. These images, acquired by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) show a section of the mouth of this outflow channel system, which lies in the transition region where the Chryse Planitia lowlands merge into the Martian highlands.
Leading aviation technology in new directions with novel ideas and developing aircraft designs that reinvent passenger flight beyond the sound barrier or that are revolutionarily quiet and low-emission – these are the two challenges that the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), together with NASA, is tasking students within Germany and the United States.
On 17 February 2017, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt; DLR) Space Administration and Airbus Defence and Space GmbH signed a contract for the design and construction phases of the German-French climate satellite MERLIN (Methane Remote Sensing LIDAR Mission).
The modernisation of air traffic management is one of the main challenges of current aeronautics research. For this reason, the European Union initiated the Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR) within the Horizon 2020 research framework programme.