Spaceflight Insider

News Archive / Tagged: German Aerospace Centre

  • Ariane 6 VINCI engine enters hot-fire testing campaign

    Tomasz NowakowskiMay 31st, 2016

    Europe’s future launcher, Ariane 6, has entered the first test campaign, marking a key milestone in its development. The manufacturer of the new rocket, Airbus Safran Launchers (ASL), has recently announced it has begun the hot-fire testing activities of the rocket’s upper stage engine, named VINCI.

  • The little lander that could: the legacy of Philae

    Tomasz NowakowskiApril 18th, 2016

    Philae, the little lander that was declared lost by the European Space Agency (ESA) earlier this year, has achieved a great deal despite its relatively short operational life on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Future comet-landing missions will likely build upon the legacy that this small wayward probe has left behind.

  • Space agencies meet to discuss space exploration

    Tomasz NowakowskiOctober 11th, 2015

    Representatives from 14 space agencies met on Wednesday, Oct. 7, at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) to discuss further steps in advancing international cooperation on space exploration. All the participating agencies form the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) – a voluntary, non-binding coordination forum to discuss global interests in space exploration.

  • Wayward Philae: ESA’s stranded comet lander wakes up from hibernation

    Tomasz NowakowskiJune 14th, 2015

    It had been seven months without any word from the European Space Agency’s Philae lander – until yesterday. ESA scientists, on Saturday, June 13 at 4:28 p.m. EDT (20:28 GMT), received the first signals from the lost spacecraft since it had suddenly went silent three days after touching down on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 12, […]

  • Philae phone home: scientists will try to contact the comet lander on March 12

    Tomasz NowakowskiMarch 11th, 2015

    The European Space Agency (ESA) led Rosetta Mission made history last year by becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and deploy a lander onto its surface. The Philae lander touched down on the comet’s surface on Nov. 19, 2014. The washing-machine sized lander’s anchoring system failed to deploy and the probe bounced across […]

  • Germany wraps up a successful year in space

    Tomasz NowakowskiJanuary 3rd, 2015

    The past year – was a very successful and eventful one for the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Germany was active in the field of human spaceflight as the country’s astronaut, Alexander Gerst, spent six months aboard the International Space Station. DLR also played the lead role in the European Space Agency’s (ESA ) Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. […]

  • Testing begins on a new instrument to be added to NASA’s flying observatory

    Britt RawcliffeJune 5th, 2014

    NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is getting outfitted with a new instrument which is set to provide astronomers and scientists with observations only possible from the sky. The high-resolution, mid-infrared spectrograph, called the Echelon-Cross-Echelle Spectrograph (EXES), began testing on the nights of April 7 and 9, according to Matthew Richter, leader of the […]

  • NASA Observatory Selects Educator Teams for 2014 Science Flights

    Press ReleaseJanuary 10th, 2014

    NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, will become a flying classroom for teachers during research flights in the next few months.