DLR - Blogs

German Space Operations Center commands small satellite with next-generation software via Cubesat Space Protocol

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:03:36 +0100

Imagine sitting in a café on a sunny day, coffee in hand, impatiently waiting for a reply to a message you’ve just sent with your new smartphone. Minutes pass slowly, and the moments of anticipation just seem to stretch out. This everyday experience of waiting for a reply mirrors the tense wait at the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) in Oberpfaffenhofen for a first message from DLR’s PIXL-I Cubesat.

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German instrument to study Moon's eternal shadows with private mission

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 13:30:00 +0100

On 22 February 2024, the US 'New Space' company Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land on the Moon with its IM-1 Odysseus mission. The landing site is located around 800 kilometres north of the lunar South Pole, east of the Malapert A crater. According to Intuitive Machines, the landing took place just 1500 metres from the intended landing site, meaning that Odysseus is located in the south of the South Pole-Aitken impact basin which measures over 2000 kilometres in diameter.

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Serendipitous science from asteroid Apophis' Earth near miss

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 08:50:00 +0100

Some people are uneasy about Friday the 13th – after all, it is popularly considered to be a very unlucky day. However, one catastrophe can be safely ruled out for Friday 13 April 2029: the collision of an approximately 350-metre-diameter asteroid, 99942 Apophis, with Earth. Apophis (a so-called Near-Earth Asteroid) will come extremely close, passing by Earth at an altitude of just 31,750 kilometres – that's within the geostationary orbit in which most telecommunication satellites are located!

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Second TRIPLE-IceCraft expedition to the Antarctic: Between battling a snowstorm and loading a dishwasher – Part 2

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:30:00 +0100

Today's weather is unpleasant, with light snow drifts and wind speeds of up to 20 knots (37 kilometres per hour). And tomorrow is expected to be even worse. Before then, we plan to bring the TRIPLE-IceCraft melting probe to Neumayer Station III. To do this, we will remove the probe from the container and place it on a snow crawler that will transport it to the station.

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Second TRIPLE-IceCraft expedition to Antarctica: Return to the eternal ice – Part 1

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 12:30:00 +0100

It's Sunday morning, 12 November 2023: The bags are packed, a quick covid test is done and the 2023-24 expedition to the 'eternal ice' is ready to begin. Our team had already travelled to Antarctica in the spring to test the TRIPLE-IceCraft meltdown probe near the Alfred Wegener Institute's (AWI) research station (AWI) Neumayer Station III. It is part of the TRIPLE project (Technologies for Rapid Ice Penetration and subglacial Lake Exploration) launched by the German Space Agency at DLR to develop an autonomous, robotic system for the contamination-free exploration of subglacial lakes and ultimately for the exploration of the oceans beneath the ice crust of Jupiter's moons Europa and Enceladus.

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On Earth instead of in space – satellite software tested using a particle accelerator

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 08:20:00 +0100

I never thought I would get this close to a particle accelerator – and yet here I am at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, standing next to such an impressive facility. As a developer of onboard software for spacecraft, I’m normally happy when the correct lights flash. There are lights here too, but it is still very different. We're working in a nearly deserted huge research facility in the middle of the night. But that doesn't mean it is quiet – due to the many technical systems that run around the clock, there is always a backdrop of flashing status lights, noisy ventilation systems and the occasional beeping device. During the day, the proton beam generated by the accelerator facility is reserved for cancer patients undergoing proton therapy. And for four nights, it is now generating space conditions for the DLR Scalable On-board computing for Space Avionics (ScOSA) project.

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What is new about the German radar satellites?

Thu, 02 Nov 2023 16:10:00 +0100

Earth is a complex and dynamic system and radar remote sensing is designed to deliver quantitative 3D and 4D information about the planet's surface. The latest research results and information products obtained from high-resolution data acquired by the German satellites were presented during the TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X Science Team Workshop, which was held at the German Aerospace Center from 18 to 20 October 2023.

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New, first destination for the Lucy spacecraft – a visit to Dinkinesh, 'you are marvellous'

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0100

Almost exactly two years ago, NASA launched the Lucy mission with a new and unusual task in the exploration of the Solar System. From 2027 to 2033, the spacecraft will investigate a number of asteroids referred to as 'Trojans', which lie 60 degrees of arc ahead of and behind the planet Jupiter on its orbit around the Sun. This time, Lucy is not, as is so often the case, an abbreviation for a string of technical terms, but the naming of the mission after a fossil link between upright walking apes and the first humans. Figuratively speaking, this mission, as so often with the study of asteroids, is about better understanding the earliest days of the Solar System. How did molecular chains, then dust and gas, and, soon after, the first planetesimals finally form the planets of the Solar System more than four and a half billion years ago? For now, however, Lucy is being steered past a 'conventional' asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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On Innovative Reference Targets and Analysis-Ready Radar Data

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 09:00:00 +0200

How to define and ensure the data quality of state-of-the-art spaceborne radar satellites? How can synergies between various current and future radar missions be leveraged? How to ensure comparability between radar data acquired by missions operated by different national and international space agencies? And how can complex data sets acquired by different radar satellites be processed in such a way that they can be used by non-radar experts? To discuss these and many other questions from the field of calibration of satellite radar missions, an international community of radar experts met at the Microwaves and Radar Institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen for the annual meeting of the CEOS WGCV SAR Subgroup on Calibration and Validation of High Resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Sensors.

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Life on Venus? A DLR FAQ about the trace gas phosphine

Fri, 25 Aug 2023 15:30:45 +0200

In 2020, the planetary research community and the interested public turned their attention to Venus. A research team from the University of Cardiff had detected the gas phosphine in the high clouds of Earth’s inner neighbouring planet for the first time. Phosphine (PH3) is produced on Earth, either naturally by organic weathering processes or artificially – for example for use as fertiliser. So, were traces of life on Earth’s neighbour indirectly discovered in 2020 by detecting phosphine? That would have been a sensation. Or was it much ado about nothing?

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High-tech drones and cardboard boxes for the future of humanitarian aid

Sun, 04 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0200

Days full of excitement, little sleep and conquering the skies – that was the adventure undertaken by researchers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Dutch company Wings for Aid. They recently tested an innovative unmanned aircraft, specifically designed for the delivery of supplies, which could significantly shape the future of humanitarian aid. Together, they fought adverse conditions and explored how new technologies can contribute to life-saving operations.

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JUICE launch to Jupiter: GALA diary from Kourou

Wed, 12 Apr 2023 12:00:00 +0200

The day before the big day: Tomorrow, the JUICE mission will launch towards Jupiter, and the DLR team will be there in Kourou! After a smooth journey via Paris, we arrived at the European spaceport in French Guiana last night. Now we are looking forward to the launch of the Ariane 5 rocket tomorrow morning at 09:15 local time (14:15 CEST). Our instruments GALA and JANUS will be sent to the Jupiter system on the JUICE spacecraft.

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TRIPLE-IceCraft Expedition to Antarctica – Drilling through the ice shelf - part 5

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0200

All of us on the team have been working towards this moment for the last few years: we will finally be able to operate our TRIPLE-IceCraft probe on the ice shelf and drill a deep hole there! The probe will now have to prove itself, and we are all very excited. After the successful four-metre-deep test drilling at Neumayer Station III a few days ago, we are optimistic and highly motivated.

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GALA on JUICE Part 3 – The challenge of radiation exposure on the 'Mount Everest of the Solar System'

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 10:10:00 +0200

The Ganymede Laser Altimeter (GALA) will face one of the most hostile environments in the Solar System while in the Jupiter system. The space around the planet is saturated with an enormously high level of radiation, so strong that it can degrade the performance of orbiting scientific instruments or even destroy them. GALA is one of ten instruments on board the JUICE mission, which will set off for the fifth planet of the Solar System in April 2023. It was meticulously developed and extensively tested to survive and function correctly in this extreme environment.

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GALA on JUICE Part 2 – From the first idea to the finished instrument – a development story

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 10:10:00 +0200

In the first part of this blog series on the Ganymede Laser Altimeter (GALA) , we introduced the instrument and its scientific goals. In this article, we will describe the long development history that a complex instrument such as GALA must go through until it can be launched into space.

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