Signing of the German-French agreement on the MERLIN climate mission

MUNICH  The two development partners, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Airbus, are signing the agreement on the MERLIN (Methane Remote Sensing LIDAR Mission) climate mission today at Airbus Defence and Space in Ottobrunn near Munich. As Bavaria’s State Secretary of Economics and Technology Franz Josef Pschierer explains during the signing of the agreement, the German-French small satellite project is supposed to deliver findings about the concentration of the greenhouse gas methane in the earth’s atmosphere from 2021. Large parts of the German investments awarded by the DLR for the construction of measuring equipment, roughly 90 million euro, went to the German Airbus Defence and Space locations in Ottobrunn and Friedrichshafen. Pschierer particularly emphasised the Bavarian share: “Important components of the technology required for the MERLIN mission come from Bavarian companies and research institutes. This shows: Bavaria is at the international forefront in the aerospace sector. We have excellent scientific institutions and innovative high-tech companies. We are continuing aerospace’s success story in Bavaria with the signing of the contract today. Several highly-qualified jobs are being secured and created as part of the mission at the Airbus location in Ottobrunn alone.”
 
Roughly 65,000 people are employed in aerospace in Bavaria today generating an annual turnover of roughly 10 billion euro. Besides the outstanding scientific institutions, Bavaria covers the industry’s entire value added chain from strong SMEs and suppliers to international major corporations and is therefore an important growth driver for Bavaria as a high-tech hub.