Currently, safety considerations related to wake vortices force pilots of small and medium-sized aircraft to maintain a separation of about 10 kilometres from heavier planes flying ahead of them.
"Go for Spacelab activities," confirmed NASA Mission Control Center on 26 April 1993 at 18:51 CET. German astronauts Hans Schlegel and Ulrich Walter and their United States colleagues had to wait almost two months until, with this command, the D2 mission could finally begin.
In 1993, during the second German D2 Spacelab Mission, astronaut Hans Schlegel orbited Earth 160 times and conducting numerous international experiments as payload specialist. This was Schlegel's first flight into space.
Bureaucracy-free assistance in the event of an emergency – this is the aim of the 15 space agencies united within the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters'.
It is the world's longest running rocket programme for conducting research in microgravity, and today it is celebrating an anniversary. Around 35 years after the launch of the first TEXUS mission in December 1977, the 50th TEXUS rocket was successfully launched into space from the Esrange Space Center near Kiruna in northern Sweden on 12 April 2013 at 06:25 CEST.
A successful experiment by DLR in cooperation with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich has opened up new possibilities in cryptography. For the first time, researchers have managed to transmit a quantum key from a fast-moving object.
It’s that time again: the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is continuing its tradition of sponsoring a special prize in the European Satellite Navigation Competition in the ESNC’s 2013 edition. Under the theme "Robust GNSS – Safety for Success", DLR is focusing on safety-critical applications and advanced techniques in connection with Galileo research and time signals. Anyone interested can submit and fine-tune their proposals from 1 April to 30 June 2013. The competition is designed to attract the participation of companies, research institutes, and other organisations, as well as private individuals.
From the outside it looks like just a large industrial robotic arm with a cockpit, but to the pilot inside the simulator, it feels like a real aircraft. The pilot sits at the controls, and the flight commands are converted into corresponding movements of the robotic arm in real time.
It began in the summer of 2009, with two legs and a camera mounted on top – but it was still far from being a robot of humanoid appearance. Gradually, the TOrque controlled humanoid RObot (TORO), the German Aerospace Center's (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) walking machine, has become more human-like – an upper body, a head with camera eyes and arms have been added.
Temperatures alternating between extreme heat and cold, electromagnetic radiation and weightlessness – environmental conditions prevailing in space are harsh. Nevertheless, satellite components and those of the International Space Station ISS and other systems must withstand these conditions and continue to function reliably. Within the national "On-Orbit-Verification"-(OOV)-Programme- the Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) is testing the maturity of space technologies under real condtitions in their intended space environment. The core element of this programme is the small satellite TET-1 built by the prime contractor Kayser-Threde GmbH of Munich.