Oberpfaffenhofen is a village that is part of the municipality of Weßling in the district of Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. It is located about from the city center of Munich.

Village

The village is home to the Oberpfaffenhofen Airport and a major site of the German Aerospace Center (''Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt'', DLR). Oberpfaffenhofen became known to a wide audience when, in 1983, the first West-German

astronaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

, the physicist Ulf Merbold, flew to space onboard a Space Shuttle in a Spacelab mission. These missions were partly supervised by the German Space Operations Center located at Oberpfaffenhofen. Raumfahrt-Kontrollzentrum 9900

The research center in Oberpfaffenhofen houses the DLR, including the Columbus Control Center which DLR operates for the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

and

Airbus Defence and Space Airbus Defence and Space is the division of Airbus SE responsible for the development and manufacturing of the corporation's defence and space products, while also providing related services. The division was formed in January 2014 during the ...

, and also some Fraunhofer Institutes and other scientific institutes. From 2014, OHB group moved the division which formerly was Kayser-Threde, from Munich to Oberpfaffenhofen. Also situated in Oberpfaffenhofen is the industrial area of (the now insolvent) Dornier Luftfahrt GmbH (later part of Fairchild Dornier). The aircraft manufacturer shared the airfield with the DLR. During the occupation of Germany the airport was designated Oberpfaffenhofen Air Force Depot which also served as the maintenance depot for the aircraft that were utilized during the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49.

References

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External links

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German Aerospace Center Oberpfaffenhofen
(DLR) {{Authority control Starnberg (district)