German Aerospace Center (DLR)
@dlr-en
We're the German Aerospace Center & are passionate about our research in #Energy #Transport #Aeronautics #Digitalisation #Space dlr.de/en dlr.de/imprint
🏎️Meet U-Shift: a modular vehicle concept developed at DLR. A U-shaped, automated electric Driveboard pairs with interchangeable capsules for passengers or cargo. In U-Shift II, researchers built a new automated prototype and demonstrated centimetre-precise capsule docking. 🚐⚡
🌔 What's hiding beneath the lunar surface – and how do we find it? That's the question behind the NEPOS project. DLR and @lmu.de are testing seismic methods on Lanzarote, where underground lava tubes have Moon-like structures – building on earlier trials in the LUNA hall.
DLR leads the international PLATO consortium and built its readout electronics and data-processing systems. 🌌 PLATO will scan hundreds of thousands of stars for Earth-sized planets from the L2 Lagrange point. ☀️ Find out more: www.dlr.de/en/latest/ne...
PLATO's ready to go! 🛰️ The spacecraft has successfully completed its electromagnetic compatibility tests at ESA's Maxwell test facility 🇳🇱 to check that its electronics all work together without interference. ✅ It has now passed all the necessary tests ahead of its launch in March 2027. 📸: @esa.int
🛰️On 5 July, Japan's Hayabusa2♯ flew closely past a half-kilometre asteroid, Torifune, at 18,000 km/h. The goal: to develop technology precise enough to deliberately deflect an asteroid threatening Earth – should we ever need to. 🪐
Mamers Valles is one of a minority of non-Latin names on Mars. It comes from Oscan, a language spoken in southern Italy around the 5th century BC to at least the 1st century AD. Its speakers, the Osci, were considered crude barbarians by Greeks & Romans.
The skies are getting busier – and AI is entering the control tower. DLR's LOKI project spent 4 years building AI systems pilots and air traffic controllers actually trust. The results? Human and digital controllers together handled up to 25% more traffic than current sector limits. 🛫
🚨When disaster strikes, coordinating emergency response isn’t simple. To change that, 16 DLR institutes are collaborating on RESITEK. Project member Konstanze Lechner gives insight into the test day in Ahrweiler – drones, autonomous vehicles & robotics, feeding a situational picture for responders.
A new era for European space security 🛰️ 🏗️👷♀️Construction has begun on the GOVSATCOM hub at DLR Cologne, where public authorities & emergency services will be able to communicate securely via satellite – even when terrestrial networks fail. 🛰️
ILA 2026 is a wrap! ✈️🚀 Five days of sharing research, discussing the future of aviation and space, and meeting people who are just as curious about what's next as we are. Thanks to everyone who stopped by DLR's exhibits in Berlin. Until next time! #ILABerlin #ILA2026 #aerospace #berlin #dlr
A coating designed to destroy. 🔥 Instead of protecting satellite components, this ultra-thin PVD coating helps them burn up more completely during atmospheric re-entry – reducing the risk of space debris reaching Earth. Developed and tested at DLR as part of ESA’s Zero Debris initiative.
A lucky coin for MODULARIS 🪙 This week DLR celebrated the keel-laying of its future 48m floating laboratory for maritime research in Flensburg.🥳 A lucky coin placed beneath a prefabricated steel module – the centuries-old start of something big. 🔩
Wings that shapeshift mid-flight? ✈️The answer is yes — thanks to HyTEM. DLR's morphAIR project is developing wings that change shape in real time. HyTEM creates a smooth, a flexible trailing edge that can bend at 10 different points along its length — reducing drag while enabling full control. 😎
100 days. One habitat. No resupply. 🚀 SOLIS100 (@esa.int × @dlr-en.bsky.social) simulates long-duration space missions at :envihab Cologne 🇩🇪. Isolation, confinement, and strict resource limits shape daily life and even food must be precisely planned. 📝
To celebrate #EarthDay, 🌍🌳 check out this spectacular view over the Pongara national park in Gabon. The image was taken last year by one of our specialised research aircraft, flying in tandem with the Biomass spacecraft from.
✈️ DLR's Falcon 20E flew behind a passenger aircraft & found that less soot doesn't mean fewer contrails. Tiny fuel & oil particles can form ice crystals too – meaning aviation's climate impact is bigger than we thought. The study, published in Nature, will help improve aviation's climate impact.
😎Breakthrough in propulsion research! 🚀 Europe’s first cryogenic rotating detonation engine (RDE) ran from gaseous oxygen to liquid at −183 °C, creating epic powerblasts and critical data. This is what the future of propulsion looks like! 💥 #propulsion #blast #rde #engineresearch
@esa.int's PLATO spacecraft is currently locked inside a giant vacuum chamber, being pushed to -80°C and +160°C to ensure it survives the extremes of space. Due out by end of March, then on to Ariane 6 in early 2027. 🛰️😎
🪐Mars Minutes is back! This time visiting the Trouvelot Crater – one of Mars’ oldest! What catches our eye is a bright central hill rich in clay & sulphur minerals formed by water. Remnants of an ancient crater lake? 🌅 Maybe. We don’t know yet – but what a sight. More Mars to come! 🥳
🌀 Every plane leaves invisible spinning vortices in its wake – and the aircraft behind it could fly right into them. They form whenever a plane generates lift, carrying enough energy to cause abrupt reactions in a following aircraft. 😎
🛰️ESA's CHEOPS detects distant planets by catching tiny dips in starlight - but that requires extraordinary precision. Thanks to DLR's thermal engineering, the detector stays stable to within 0.01 °C. Without that, accurate exoplanet measurements simply wouldn't be possible. 🔬🌍
In 2029, asteroid Apophis will fly safely by Earth. @esa.int & JAXA are sending RAMSES to study it with two CubeSats: Don Quijote, which will land on the asteroid, and Farinella. Why? Because asteroid impacts are the only natural disaster we could prevent. 🚀🌍[
🚁 DLR’s Smart Twisting Active Rotor (STAR) project is testing ‘smart’ rotor blades that twist using electric actuators and reduce noise by 7 dB – cutting vibrations and boosting efficiency. A big step for quieter, smoother, more efficient helicopters & future urban air mobility!
ESA's Plato spacecraft gets shaken to its core! 🚀 These vibration tests simulate the extreme forces during lift-off – one of many checks to ensure a successful journey to space. 📹: @esa.int #plato #shakeit #vibecheck #dlr
🌍 Winter storms in Europe are hard to predict because key processes start high over the North Atlantic. 💨 Dry air intrusions can worsen many storms as they travel from North America to Europe. ✈️ HALO is now stationed in Ireland to take measurements across the Atlantic, improving weather models.
Did Mars scrape its knee? 🔴 Not quite. These ‘yardangs’ are elongated ridges carved by wind into rock over millions of years. Mars' thin atmosphere (less than 1% of Earth's pressure) still packs enough punch to sandblast the surface – even areas like these, which are almost the size of Belgium! 💨
Small satellites: tiny, affordable and flexible 🚀 They can monitor wildfires, map ocean waves in 3D and countless else 🌍 Discover how they’re changing space research and why future smallsats might even be wood based, in the latest edition of the DLRmagazine! www.dlr.de/en/media/pub... #DLR #smallsat
What a year. ✨ 2025 was packed with projects, collaborations, and milestones we’re proud of. Thank you to everyone who made it possible - we can’t wait to see what the next year has in store! 🎉😀 #2026 here we come!
🚀 For the New Year, share your #GoodLuckMMX wishes to JAXA Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission and the DLR-@cnes.fr Idefix rover – and they’ll fly on a memory card inside the return capsule on the 2026 mission to Phobos – the Martian moon named after fear itself.🌌