Walther Pelzer is the newly appointed Executive Board Member of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the new Head of the DLR Space Administration in Bonn, succeeding Gerd Gruppe.
The new Vulcain 2.1 engine, which is set to carry the new European launcher Ariane 6 into space in 2020, is intended to achieve greater efficiency at lower costs. However, before such a launch can be successfully carried out, the development engines must prove that they can cope with the enormous 130-ton thrust, temperatures of approximately 3000 degrees Celsius in the combustion chamber, the high rotational speeds of the turbo pumps and the pressure in the propellant lines.
On 22 January 2018, EOMAP GmbH & Co. KG, a spin-off of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), presented its online portal for water quality data for all inland and coastal waters worldwide at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
The latest images acquired by the HRSC camera show the Neukum impact crater. This crater was named after the German physicist and planetary scientist Gerhard Neukum, who passed away in 2014. Neukum was the person behind the HRSC.
With the arrival and unloading of the EDEN ISS greenhouse at the edge of the Antarctic ice shelf, the construction process has begun. "We can hardly wait, as our four-person construction team set foot on the Antarctic continent before Christmas," says EDEN-ISS Project Manager Daniel Schubert.
Emergency services in the US state of California are still fighting fierce forest fires. Severe drought and strong winds have allowed the fires to spread. The FireBIRD (Fire Bispectral InfraRed Detector) mission run by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) consists of a pair of satellites – TET-1 (Technology Experiment Carrier) and BIROS (Bispectral Infrared Optical System).
On 15 December at 16:36 CET (10:36 local time), the US Dragon CRS 13 capsule was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) from Cape Canaveral (Florida) by a Falcon 9 rocket.
It is the end of 2021: the German communications satellite and technology demonstrator Heinrich Hertz has been mounted on an Ariane 5 rocket in the final assembly hall, Bâtiment d’Assemblage Final (BAF), at the European Spaceport in French Guiana and is being rolled towards the launch pad, freshly fuelled.
This unusual image, acquired by the Mars High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), shows a view of the northern hemisphere of Mars from the Martian north polar ice cap, situated at the bottom, up to the Martian equator at the horizon. It was taken for calibration of the camera in June this year.
On 12 December 2017 at 19:36 Central European Time (15:36 local time), the 'Nicole', 'Zofia', 'Alexandre' and 'Irina' satellites of the European Galileo satellite navigation system were launched to space on board an Ariane 5 launcher from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana.
Around the time of the Paris climate summit on 12 December 2017, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japanese National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) signed a collaboration agreement regarding remote sensing of greenhouse gases.
More and more people around the world are flocking to cities, creating densely populated regions. This also means that natural disasters pose a threat to a greater number of people, and that risk has been rising for decades worldwide.
The first satellite images from the Sentinel-5 precursor were presented at the Earth Observation Center (EOC) of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen on 1 December 2017.
The inner values revealed in this year's last DLRmagazine say something about the resilience of components. But as is the case with inner values, they are not readily disclosed. The information is cleverly obtained from the material, by means of three-dimensional digital images of the pores in material alloys, for example.
How did the Solar System form? Are we alone in the Universe? What scientific methods can we use to prove the existence of extraterrestrial lifeforms? These questions fascinate scientists and non-scientists alike. Planetary research seeks to find answers.
These images from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) show a region of Mars strongly marked by volcanic activity and associated tectonic processes. A striking feature is the existence of parallel grabens crossing the region – the Sirenum Fossae.
How can modern agriculture benefit from satellite remote sensing? What does space technology offer digital farming and crop cultivation ('smart farming')? The German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is providing the answers to these and similar questions from 12 to 18 November 2017 at Agritechnica in Hanover, the world's largest trade fair for agricultural machinery.
Cyber security and fire detection from space: these two ideas have won this year's Special Prize of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) as part of the 'European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC)' and the 'Copernicus Masters'.
In theory, it is impossible. Current theories of planetary emergence dictate that only small, rocky planets – and not a giant planet – can form around a dwarf star. The most recent discovery by the Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) system has thrown some doubt on this assumption.
After more than 15 years, the German-US Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) for precise measuring of Earth's gravity field has come to an end. Since its launch from the Russian cosmodrome in Plesetsk on 17 March 2002 on board a Rockot launcher, the twin satellites GRACE-1 and GRACE-2 have been orbiting Earth in close formation flight, precisely recording how Earth's gravity field changes over time.