Oberpfaffenhofen

Oberpfaffenhofen is a village which is part of the municipality of Weßling in the district of Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. It is 20 kilometers from the city center of Munich.The village is home to a major site of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR) and became hence known to a wide audience when, in 1983 the first West-German astronaut, the physicist Ulf Merbold flew to space on board a Space Shuttle in the context of the Spacelab missions. These missions were partly supervised by the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) located at Oberpfaffenhofen.The research centre in Oberpfaffenhofen houses the DLR, including the Columbus Control Center which DLR operates for the European Space Agency and Airbus Defence and Space, 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.