2014 was a very successful and eventful year 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 and DLR played the lead role in ESA's Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
But that's not all, for over 10 years now, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) camera on board Mars Express spacecraft, German scientists have been photographing and mapping Mars.
Gerst was the first German in space since 2008 and, after Thomas Reiter (2006), the second to live and work almost six months on board the ISS.
In addition to routine scientific work, the youngest German astronaut, the 11th in total, performed maintenance and was responsible for supervising the arrival of supply vehicles, among them the final European space freighter, ATV-5 Georges Lemaitre.
Among other things, ATV-5 carried the German experiments EML, MagVector, WiseNet and SpaceTex, which Gerst unpacked and installed in the European research laboratory, Columbus.
"I am particularly pleased about the roughly 100 experiments that Alex Gerst took part in, 25 of which originated from Germany. His flight has shown that in human spaceflight and especially its utilization, Germany plays a leading role worldwide," said Johann-Dietrich Worner, Chairman of the DLR Executive Board, after Gerst returned to Earth on Nov. 10.
DLR played a major role in building the Rosetta's Philae lander and runs the lander control center which prepared and oversaw the difficult task of landing on the comet on Nov. 12. Rosetta spacecraft is operated by teams at ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. DLR has also developed the ROLIS (Rosetta Lander Imaging System) camera to obtain high-resolution images during descent and stereo panoramic images of areas sampled by other instruments.
Even NASA Administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged Germany's role in leading the first ever comet landing mission. "Congratulations! I watched last night's dramatic landing of Philae with great excitement and pride for our German partners. I know that DLR is leading the landing effort, as well as providing ROLIS, which took such amazing descent images of comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko as Philae approached the surface," Bolden said.
"Germany's leadership in the landing mission has already firmly placed Europe and Germany again in the history books for achieving the audacious and unbelievable."
German contribution to Mars exploration continues as the HRSC, which was developed by DLR and is on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, has been in operation since 2004, delivering high-resolution, three-dimensional color images, the spatial resolution of which surpasses previous topographical image data.
These images enable scientists to analyze details with an altitude accuracy of down to 10 meters and thus acquire new knowledge about the geological development and climatic history of Mars.
Speaking of Mars, in 2014 a DLR researcher experienced what it must be like to live on the Red Planet by spending four months in a habitat on Hawaii that simulated a Martian environment.
This year it was also decided that the space telescope PLATO, scheduled to launch in 2024, will search for a 'second Earth'. "This unique European space telescope, designed to search for exoplanets, will enable German and European scientists to engage in truly cutting-edge research in this field of astronomy," said Worner.
Future looks also bright for German space industry as we will witness a multitude of new projects, among them the asteroid landing craft MASCOT on board the Japanese Hayabusa 2 spacecraft, or the research conducted with the flying observatory SOFIA, recently returned to California after six months of maintenance in Hamburg.
Last but not least, although the last ATV was dispatched into space back in August, the German technology developed for this purpose will remain in use as part of NASA's new Orion spacecraft.
