German Aerospace Center (DLR)

What they do

DLR, the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, is Germany's national research centre for aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalisation. It has about 12,000 employees in 51 research institutes and facilities at 30 locations in Germany, with offices in Brussels, Paris, Tokyo and Washington. Headquartered in Cologne, it also hosts the German Space Agency, which plans and carries out the federal government's space programme.

Why it matters

DLR's work reaches far beyond Germany. Its German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen controls satellites, and its Earth observation missions supply data used by mapmakers, aviation authorities and climate scientists worldwide. The best example is TanDEM-X: two radar satellites flying only a few hundred metres apart that produced a seamless elevation model of the planet's entire land surface.

Products to know

• TanDEM-X and WorldDEM: the global 3D elevation model with a 12 metre grid, completed in September 2016.
• TerraSAR-X, the radar satellite in orbit since 2007 that forms the other half of the pair.
• Wind tunnels, aircraft research fleets and test facilities used by European aerospace industry.

The German angle

DLR's roots go back to 1907, when the Modellversuchsanstalt was founded in Göttingen and built the first closed circuit wind tunnel of the so called Göttingen type, associated with the aerodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl. Three research bodies merged in 1969 to form the DFVLR, which was renamed DLR in 1989 and given its current English name, German Aerospace Center, in 1997. TanDEM-X shows the German model of public private partnership: DLR runs the mission, while Airbus built the satellites, shares the costs and sells the commercial elevation product.

For business readers the key point is that DLR is both a research centre and a funding agency, so much of Germany's aerospace supply chain works with it in one role or the other.

Sources

• DLR: About us
• DLR: The history of aviation research in Germany
• DLR: TanDEM-X