Incoming ESA director-general contemplates ‘Space 4.0’

Johann-Dietrich Woerner has taken up the position of director-general of the European Space Agency, following the start of his term on 1 July.

Woerner, who from 2007 to 2014 was chief of the executive board of the German Aerospace Centre, said the ESA, whose headquarters are in Paris, was in a new phase in which space was “a day to day business” concerned with societal interaction and commercialisation. This phase was ‘Space 4.0’, Woerner said.

Woerner replaces the ESA’s longest serving director-general. Jean-Jacques Dordain’s term of office ended on 30 June, after eleven years in the role.