Mars Express flew over the boundary between Kasei Valles and Sacra Fossae and the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) imaged the region, acquiring spectacular views of the chaotic terrain in the area.
The SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) satellite was launched on Monday, 2 November 2009 at 02:50 Central European Time (CET) from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, 800 kilometres north of Moscow. The satellite is beginning a unique mission: the large-area mapping of soil moisture and ocean salinity. The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has already initiated a number of research projects in order to evaluate the environmental data.
Is the Earth the only place in our Solar System on which living organisms exist? Is there, for example, life on Mars? The goal of the European space mission ExoMars is to resolve this question. To this end, the atmosphere on Mars is being simulated at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Göttingen.
From 21 to 23 October 2009, experts from all over the world will meet on the campus of the United Nations in Bonn for the 3rd International UN-SPIDER Bonn Workshop – with the topic 'From Concepts to Application'. This international workshop on the use of space technologies for disaster management is organised by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and is supported by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
The image, acquired by the German radar satellite TerraSAR-X, shows part of the southern Rhine Rift Valley near Freiburg and the city of Staufen. Two separate images that were acquired by the satellite six months apart during 2008 were combined to form what is known as an interferogram. In Staufen, a clear pattern of deformation can be seen, caused by an elevation of the substrata.
On Thursday, 15 October 2009, the ThermoLab experiment was launched on the International Space Station (ISS). Scientists from Berlin’s Charité university hospital want to use it to study changes in the heat balance and the circulation of people who are in zero gravity conditions. A new sensor that was developed on behalf of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) by Charité and Draegerwerk Lübeck is being used.
At 14:00 on Saturday, 10 October, the BEXUS 8 research balloon was launched from the Esrange European rocket and balloon launch site near the Swedish town of Kiruna. Its gondola contained experimental equipment assembled by students at the University of Rostock for the measurement of atmospheric turbulence.
The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) operated by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) on board the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter imaged Daedalia Planum, a sparsely cratered, untextured plain on the Red Planet, featuring solidified lava flows of varying ages.
Stefan Ratke is 25 years old. He successfully completed his apprenticeship in precision toolmaking at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in the summer of 2009. Today, he works as a mechanical technician at DLR’s Engineering Systems House, a facility for engineering and integrated manufacturing of scientific equipment at DLR Cologne. This is part seven of the DLR Web Portal portrait series.
The exhibition 'Out of this World - Wonders of the Solar System', presented by the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and Gasometer Oberhausen GmbH, has been extended until 30 December 2010. More than 300,000 visitors have so far experienced the wonders on show. Following the enormous success of the exhibition, it has been named as a project of RUHR.2010, the European Capital of Culture 2010.
This image shows the urban region of Munich and the surrounding area. It was acquired on 2 May 2009 at a resolution of 10 metres. The urban area is depicted in shades of red and yellow, while agricultural land appears in shades of green with woodland and forest areas shown in shades of blue. This information can, for example, be used to produce land usage maps, as well as for town planning purposes.
The doors to the German Aerospace Center were not intended to open to the public until 10:00. The attractions on display at the DLR site – in the aerospace and energy research laboratories and facilities and at the ESA astronaut-training centre – all ensured that a large number of visitors sought to be admitted as early in the day as possible. This meant that the entrance gates to DLR were opened at 09:30, half an hour earlier than planned. By that evening, about 100,000 guests had attended German Aerospace Day 2009.
In early February 2009, the CoRoT satellite discovered the planet CoRoT-7b, measuring just two Earth radii in size. Following a series of elaborate and high-precision measurements conducted by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), it has now proven possible to determine the mass of this extra-solar planet. CoRoT-7b is five times heavier than our home planet and has approximately the same density. CoRoT-7b therefore definitively belongs to the class of what are known as 'Super Earths'. Scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have a substantial role to play in this search for exoplanets using the CoRoT space telescope.
From 7–21 September 2009, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) will perform, for the 14th time, a series of research flights to provide weightlessness conditions, using the Airbus A300 ZERO-G. The event will also celebrate ten years of activity for DLR’s parabolic flight programme for microgravity research.
On Tuesday 1 September 2009, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsche Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) announced the third contest in the REXUS/BEXUS programme. Students are invited to submit their proposals for experiments to be carried in the gondola of a stratospheric balloon in Autumn 2010 or in a high-altitude rocket in Spring 2011.
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