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21.03.19 - InSight mission – Diagnostic run for the 'Mole' on Mars The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) will command the Mars ‘Mole’ to begin a short new round of hammering at the end of March. The seismometer and the camera will closely monitor the movement of the Mole. The researchers want to analyse in more detail the situation of the self-hammering probe, which has shown no further progress since it reached a depth of approximately 30 centimetres at the beginning of March. Different ideas for releasing the Mole require a more detailed analysis of the situation and at least a few more weeks to test different strategies on Earth. Read more

11.3.19 - Vom Nordpolarkreis in die Schwerelosigkeit Rund ein Jahr lang hatten die Studierendenteams aus Bremen, München und Jena auf diesen Moment hingearbeitet: Am 11. März 2019 ist um 10:20 Uhr Mitteleuropäischer Zeit (MEZ) die Forschungsrakete REXUS 25 erfolgreich vom Raumfahrtzentrum Esrange bei Kiruna in Nordschweden gestartet. An Bord befanden sich die Experimente der deutschen Teams sowie von Studierenden der Universität Danzig und der TU Eindhoven. Die Rakete erreichte bei dem Flug eine Höhe von rund 80 Kilometern, wobei für rund zwei Minuten Schwerelosigkeit herrschte. Read more

5.3.19 -InSight mission: the Mars ‘Mole’ takes a break As part of NASA’s InSight mission, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) developed a penetrometer designed to dig three to five metres below the surface of Mars and measure the heat emanating from the planet’s interior. After the Mars ‘Mole’ began hammering into the ground on Thursday 28 February, the probe, which is part of DLR’s HP3 (Heat and Physical Properties Package) instrument, came about three-quarters of the way out of its housing structure before stopping. Data also suggests that the 'Mole' is at a 15-degree tilt. Read more

1.3.19 - „Good luck ‘Mole’ – DLR’s HP3 experiment starts hammering into the Martian soil On 28 February 2019, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) ‘Mole’ fully automatically hammered its way into the Martian subsurface for the first time. In a first step, it penetrated to a depth between 18 and 50 centimetres into the Martian soil with 4000 hammer blows over a period of four hours. "On its way into the depths, the mole seems to have hit a stone, tilted about 15 degrees and pushed it aside or passed it," reports Tilman Spohn, Principal Investigator of the HP3 experiment. "The Mole then worked its way up against another stone at an advanced depth until the planned four-hour operating time of the first sequence expired. Tests on Earth showed that the rod-shaped penetrometer is able to push smaller stones to the side, which is very time-consuming. Read more

13.02.19 - InSight mission – DLR 'Mole' deployed on surface of Mars It stands vertically on flat ground, ready for its historic mission. At 19:18 CET on 12 February 2019, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP³) or 'Mole' was deployed on the Martian surface using the NASA InSight mission's robotic arm. In the coming weeks, the remote controlled penetrometer is expected to make space history by becoming the first probe to reach a depth of up to five metres in the Martian subsurface. Its goal is to measure the temperature and thermal conductivity of the subsurface and thus determine the heat flow from the interior of Mars. Read more

20.10.17 - Students research the stratosphere in the Arctic The BEXUS 24 research balloon was launched from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden at 13:39 Central European Summer Time on Wednesday 18 October 2017. The balloon reached its maximum altitude of 24.6 kilometres at 15:25 at which point the gondola separated from the balloon (in a procedure called 'cut down'). The gondola landed back on Earth at 17:22 local time. On board the joint mission by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the Swedish National Space Board (SNSB) were four science experiments designed by student teams from Spain, Italy and Sweden. Read more