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6.8.19 - Milestone for the future of networked satellite communications With the launch of the first EDRS-C communications satellite on 6 August 2019, a milestone has been reached for the EDRS system. EDRS is a globally unique network of geostationary relay satellites that can deliver data volumes of up to 1.8 gigabits per second to Earth with minimal delay using laser communications. Read more

05.08.19 - 'Space data highway' Preparations nearly complete at the German Space Operations Center The final preparations for the launch of the EDRS-C satellite are currently underway at the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) in Oberpfaffenhofen. The communications satellite is scheduled to lift off from the European Spaceport in French Guiana on 6 August 2019 and will be a core component of the European Data Relay System (EDRS) – the 'space data highway'. Using satellite-based Laser Communications Terminals (LCTs), EDRS can transmit large amounts of data from space to Earth in a very short time. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and GSOC are responsible for operating the EDRS-C satellite, the EDRS payloads and the ground stations. Read more

15.7.19 - MASCOT confirms what scientists have long suspected Ryugu and other asteroids of the common ‘C-class’ consist of more porous material than was previously thought. Small fragments of their material are therefore too fragile to survive entry into the atmosphere in the event of a collision with Earth. This has revealed the long-suspected cause of the deficit of this meteorite type in finds on Earth. Read more

19.6.19 - A rover for Phobos and Deimos Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos. These are the target of the Japanese Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission, which also involves international partners. Scheduled for launch in 2024. it will enter Mars orbit n 2025, and return samples to Earth in 2029. The spacecraft will carry a German-French rover that will land on either Phobos or Deimos and explore the surface in detail for several months. 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

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