Audi 2010 Annual Report Download - page 49

I
t’s actually hard to believe that
Measuring the World became a
bestseller. The book, in which
two 19th-century scientists
travel around the world drawing maps,
is over 300 pages long. In this age of
navigation systems and Google Earth,
in which every square mile of the
Earth has supposedly been measured,
photographed, and mapped out, who
would be interested in such a story?
Apparently, a surprising number of
people. Since 2005, Daniel Kehlmann’s
bestselling novel about German
explorers Alexander von Humboldt
and Carl Friedrich Gauss has sold more
than two million copies in Germany
alone. The subject matter presented
by this German author is one people
fi nd fascinating. After all, even in
an age in which nearly 1,000 active
satellites orbit the globe, we are still
a long way from knowing all there is
to know about the 150 million square
kilometers of land surface that covers
the Earth. The Earth continues to be
measured. In more sophisticated ways,
more completely, and more accurately
than ever before. Audi customers will
also benefi t from this; with the future
navigation systems, they will be able to
fi nd buildings, plazas and streets even
more easily.
Look for the place from which these
measurements are controlled, and
you will fi nd it in Upper Bavaria. In
Oberpfaff enhofen, in the district of
Starnberg, a municipality between
Munich and Lake Ammersee. Located
just next to an airplane landing strip
is one of the 13 sites of the German
Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum
für Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR): This is
a modern glass and concrete building
in which what you might call the
“navigator” descendants of Humboldt
and Gauss are at work. Some 150
years after their death, their dream
of navigating with high levels of
precision might fi nally be achieved.
In Oberpfaff enhofen, 200 DLR
employees are in control of the two
most important navigation and Earth
observation – or mapping – projects of
our time.
Manfred Zink is one of them. The
department head at DLR quite liter-
ally has his eye on the two satellites
that are supposed to remeasure
the world from an altitude of over
500 kilometers. TerraSAR-X, together
with its twin TanDEM-X, traveling only
200 meters away, will create a 3D
elevation model of the Earth’s land
surface. So accurately that the topo-
graphy of the Earth will be measured
with a vertical accuracy of two meters.
Zink and his team are responsible for
mission control – from monitoring the
two satellites to generating data. Last
fall, he “got butterfl ies in his stomach”
when the two satellites fell into their
tight formation fl ight, since nothing like
that had ever been attempted before.
Formation fl ight: The satellites
TerraSAR-X (left) and TanDEM-X
will measure the Earth’s entire
land surface in just three years.
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