NATIONAL REPORT ON SOUNDING ROCKET AND BALLOON RESEARCH ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE GERMAN SPACE PROGRAMME

Since many years sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons have played a crucial role in implementing the German Space Science, Microgravity Research, Earth Observation, and Technology Development programmes. Recently, their dedicated utilisation in the education process of students of space science and technology disciplines became an additional and exciting element. The German Space Agency DLR manages all these activities and funds the related experiments by grants. Using rockets and balloons the current research focus in Space Science is the mesosphere and ionosphere of the Earth as well as the atmosphere of the sun. In Microgravity Research, the fields of life and physical sciences benefit from medium-duration rocket experiments. In Earth Observation balloon-borne measurements are conducted for the validation of atmospheric sounding instruments on the ENVISAT satellite. New technology is being developed for the next hypersonic re-entry flight of a SHEFEX rocket. The first REXUS / BEXUS student activities under the auspices of the Swedish-German student programme were conducted in 2008.