The Apollo Guidance Computer (“AGC”) was used onboard the Apollo spacecraft to support the Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972. A very interesting talk during the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) sheds some light on this interesting peace of hardware, including its clever hardware design, its revolutionary OS, and how its software allowed humans to reach and explore the moon.

This week Google released its latest remarkable Google Street View Project. Thanks to ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet who has been on-board the International Space Station (ISS) from 17th of November 2016 until 2nd of June 2017 , Google captured Street View imagery and thereby mapped the whole space station with all its 15 modules in 360 degree.

‘Horizons’ is the name of German ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst’s next mission. 41-year-old German geophysicist, Alexander Gerst is scheduled to embark on his second research trip to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of expedition 56/57 in late April 2018.. After the Belgian ESA astronaut, Frank de Winne, Gerst will be the second European to be commander of the ISS. Gerst will remain in orbit, at an altitude of around 380 kilometres, for six months – until the end of October 2018. The name ‘Horizons’ symbolises the curiosity and fascination of exploring and researching the unknown.

Thanks to the german astronaut Alexander Gerst and his numerous photos taken during his six month journey in space on board of the International Space Station (ISS), ESA released this marvelous time lapse video showing stunning images from our blue planet. During his 166 days on board, he managed to take about 12500 shots in constant intervals, showing snapshots of auroras, sunrises & sunsets, cloud formations, stars, oceans, our Milky Way, lightnings and last but not least our thin and fragile atmosphere.

With over 20000 fatalities and numerous human catastrophes all around the globe over the past year, there is a high demand for a continuous and near-real-time warning system for casualties of natural disasters. With the establishment of the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ in 1999, all important space agencies agreed on sharing their satellite resources to provide a 24/7 monitoring of natural disasters all over the globe.

In this thesis a performance assessment for the future German-French climate monitoring initiative, Methane Remote Sensing Lidar Mission (MERLIN), proposed by DLR and CNES in 2010 was undertaken. A general space lidar performance issue is the obstruction by optically dense clouds. For this purpose cloud free statistics, the global cloud top flatness and global cloud top distributions were derived from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) level 2, 333 m and 5 km lidar cloud-layer products between 01 January 2007 and 01 January 2008.

The 2003 Bam, Iran earthquake was a major earthquake with a moment magnitude of 6.6, that caused a huge number of casualties as well as major destructions in Bam and the surrounding Kerman province. Due to continous observation from space it is possible to determine the geophysical processes involved not only by classical seismographs but also by Radar interferometry.

Presentation and introduction to the topic of antarctic ice-mass balances and the improvement of its estimate for the past 5 years.

Finally after 9 month of flighttime, NASA’s mobile laboraty made it to Mars. Carrying the most advanced payload of scientific gear ever used on Mars‘ surface, the Mars rover is ready to investigate whether conditions have been favorable for microbial life and for preserving clues in the rocks about possible past life. The Curiosity Mission is the follow on mission of NASA’s past Mars Mission with twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity launched in 2003.