Together with the site at Koeln, the DLR site at Oberpfaffenhofen is one of Germany's largest research centres. Located near the A96 motorway between Munich and Lindau, the site is home to eight scientific institues and currently employs approximately 1700 people. The research centre's main fields of activity include paricipating in space missions, climate research, research and development in the field of Earth observation, developing navigation systems and advanced robotics development.
A precise understanding of glacier evolution requires knowledge of a glacier's exact mass. This is important in South America, in the tropical regions between Bolivia and Venezuela, where meltwater from glaciers provides drinking water during the dry season.
There is a new plan to support the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Mars ‘Mole’ that is part of NASA’s InSight mission. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) Mole is a self-driving penetrator that has hammered itself into the Martian subsurface to a depth of approximately 30 centimetres.
On 1 June 2019, as part of activities marking the 50th anniversary of the first humans landing on the Moon, a ‘Moon Talk’ was held in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke also participated in a panel discussion. During the ‘First Moon Landing’ introductory presentation, the former director of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Robotics and Mechatronics Center, Gerd Hirzinger, showed exciting aspects and details of the Apollo 11 mission using a newly-developed Virtual Reality (VR) simulation. This simulation shows the descent and landing of Eagle, the exploration of the terrain around the landing site by the astronauts, as well as part of the ascent and return to the Command and Service Module (CSM) that remained in lunar orbit.
A comprehensive flood scenario was simulated in The Hague from 22 to 23 May 2019 as part of the Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience (DRIVER+) project. Five innovative solutions were evaluated.