DLR has its headquaters in Cologne. The site is located next to Cologne-Bonn airport. Approximately 1,500 employees work in the institutes and facilities and in the central administration.
The original Philae comet lander has been travelling through space since 2 March 2004. It is currently in hibernation mode, awaiting its arrival at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. But the Philae models on the ground are being put through their paces: they are being tested to breaking point and examined by DLR.
For the first time, researchers at DLR have been able to carry out noise measurements inside a helicopter engine. To do so, researchers from the Division of Engine Acoustics at the DLR Institute of Propulsion Technology in Berlin used new hot gas microphone probes specially designed for investigating the processes responsible for noise generation.
2153 mirrors twist and turn at DLR Experimental Solar Thermal Power Plant in Jülich, directing sunlight onto a 22-square-metre receiver. TerraSAR-X, the German radar satellite operated by DLR, can also detect the mirrors as they follow the Sun – from more than 500 kilometres above Earth.