German-Polish small satellite project
German-Polish small satellite project
On 12 September 2012 at the ILA Berlin Air Show, Germany and Poland laid the foundations for cooperation in space. Gerd Gruppe, the DLR Executive Board Member for the German Space Administration, and Marek Banaszkiewicz, Director of the Space Research Centre (Centrum Badań Kosmicznych; CBK) at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk; PAN) signed a declaration of intent for their first bilateral satellite mission in the presence of Germany's Federal Minister of Economics and Technology, Philipp Rösler (2nd from the right), Andrzej Szynka, Chargé d'Affaires at the Polish embassy in Berlin (2nd from the left) and the Chairman of the DLR Executive Board, Johann-Dietrich Wörner (centre). The signing took place on the DLR stand at ILA. The name of the university project is 'German-Polish Formation Flying Technology Demonstration Mission', a technology demonstration in which two small satellites will orbit in close formation in 2016.
