Johann-Dietrich Wörner is New ESA Director General

Paris, France, July 1, 2015--Johann-Dietrich Wörner has assumed the postion of Director-General of the European Space Agency (ESA) effective today. He is based at ESA Headquarters in Paris, France.

“I am in the favourable position to nurture the seeds of Jean-Jacques Dordain’s work,” said Mr Wörner during a recent media briefing at the Paris Air Show, expressing his thanks to the parting Director General.

Wörner called for the continuation of ESA’s ongoing programs, projects and missions in cooperation with Member States, as well as preparing for ESA’s future, among the many important tasks he has to fulfill.

Johann-Dietrich Wörner

Referring to this future as ‘Space 4.0’, Mr Woerner considers that ESA has already started to enter this new phase, in which space has become a day-to-day business and in which interaction with society, the commercialisation of space, resulting new roles for industry and a fostered, cooperative relation with the European Commission all play important roles.

The ESA Council unanimously appointed Mr Woerner on 18 December 2014 for a period of four years. Previously, he was Chairman of the Executive Board of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), from March 2007 to June 2015. Originally from Kassel, Germany, Mr Woerner is married and has three children.

He succeeds Jean-Jacques Dordain, whose term of office ended on 30 June. Dordain is ESA’s longest-serving Director General, who led the Agency from July 2003 to June 2015.

Wörner studied civil engineering at the Technische Universität Berlin and the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, from where he graduated in 1985. In 1982, as part of his studies, he spent two years in Japan, investigating earthquake safety.

Until 1990 Wörner worked for the consulting civil engineers König und Heunisch. In 1990 he returned to Darmstadt University, where he was appointed to a professorship in Civil Engineering and took over as Head of the Testing and Research Institute. Before being elected President of the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 1995, he held the position of Dean of the Civil Engineering Faculty.

ESA is an intergovernmental organisation, created in 1975, with the mission to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space delivers benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.