🏎️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. 🚐⚡

🔥🌍Watching wildfires from orbit – and helping crews on the ground respond faster. DLR's Fire Monitoring System uses MODIS data from NASA's Terra-1 and Aqua-1 satellites, and the Sentinel-3 OLCI, to track burning areas almost in real time. 🔍

🌔 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.

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

[1/2] Half a century of wind, wings and data! 💨✈️ On 30 June 1976, the then DFVLR* (today's DLR) and the Netherlands Aerospace Centre launched DNW, the German-Dutch Wind Tunnels foundation. 50 years later, DNW has helped perfect icons like the A380, Eurofighter and F-35. 🎉

🛰️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.

📖 DLR’s heritage builds on its predecessor organisations, starting in 1907. The years to 1945 saw groundbreaking research marked by periods of war and injustice. Here, we summarise the background and objectives of our comprehensive historical study of this period.

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. 📝

📅 100 days 👥 6 volunteers 🔒 1 sealed research facility What happens to us when we're cut off from the world? The SOLIS100 study has officially begun in Germany to study the effects of isolation on humans: www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

SOLIS100 isolation study begins in Germany

Six volunteers have stepped into a sealed habitat in Cologne, Germany, marking the start of SOLIS100, a new human isolation study led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and conducted by the German Aer...

esa.int

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.

It's almost time! Wishing the crew a safe and swift landing! 🥳😃🚀

ESA Exploration@exploration.esa.int · 4mo ago

A serene and selenic view 🌙 Orion and our European Service Module are bringing the Artemis II crew back home 🌍 🔗 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

👨‍🚀 The #Artemis II crew are now further from home than any humans ever, and European engines brought them there 🚀. 🌍 The record of 400 171 km was previously held by the Apollo 13 mission 🌕.

More incredible imagery from the Artemis II mission! 🌍Watching this crew push the boundaries of human exploration is truly exciting 😃We can't wait to see more! 😊🚀

NASASpaceflight.com@nasaspaceflight.com · 4mo ago

Taking one more small step for man (and woman), and the next giant leap for mankind, launching a new era of celestial exploration, Artemis II & its crew flew around the moon aboard Orion Integrity going further than anyone before them. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbpd...

How do we protect astronauts from space radiation on the way to the Moon? 🌕Thomas Berger (DLR) breaks down one of the toughest challenges of leaving Earth: what does it take to stay safe in space? The question suddenly feels very real with Artemis II on the way to the Moon 🚀 #artemis2 #dlr #nasa

😃 What a remarkable result! ESA's Juice mission turned its instruments toward interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in November 2025 in a once-in-a-generation opportunity. 🛰️ Proud to play our part as scientists now dig into these extraordinary datasets. We can't wait to see more of this! 😍☄️

ESA Space Science@science.esa.int · 4mo ago

🆕☄️ The wait is over. Back in November 2025, our Juice mission observed Comet 3I/ATLAS with five science instruments. The data have arrived back on Earth, and scientists are delving in. Here are five things they've already discovered 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪 1/6

✅ New photos just in. See flic.kr/s/aHBqjCPE1j Coming up, in a few hours, a final burn performed by our European Service Module's main engine will send the crew on their way to the Moon! (Pics: ESA/S. Corvaja) @exploration.esa.int

And we are ready! 🛰️ Flying along for the ride is our improved M-42 EXT radiation sensor, which will help to better understand the radiation risks astronauts face on the way to the Moon. 🥳🔬 What an exciting week ahead! #artemis2

European Space Agency@esa.int · 4mo ago

#ComingSoon: Artemis II next launch opportunities open from 1 April 23:24 BST/2 April 00:24 CEST, our European Service Module powering NASA’s Orion spacecraft around the Moon! Stay tuned. 🚀

😎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. 😎