Gaia People

Ared Schnorhk

Gaia AIV and Launcher Interface Manager

European Space Agency

In 1987, after his engineering degree in hydraulics/fluid mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland), Ared joined the European Space Agency (ESA) at its Space Research & Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. For about ten years, he participated in and led several research and development programmes in the field of chemical propulsion (liquid and solid). In parallel, as a propulsion specialist, he supported the propulsion system development and testing of ESA scientific spacecraft like SOHO, XMM-Newton and Integral.

In 1998, Ared moved to the ESA Science Directorate as member of the Cluster 2 team (4 identical satellites for the measurement of the Earth magnetic field) as responsible for the mechanical and propulsion systems. After two successful launches (mid 2000), he joined the Mars Express team and, just after launch (June 2003), he became part of the Venus Express team with, in addition, the responsibilities of the thermal system and launcher interface.

In the period between the Venus Express launch in October 2005 and its orbit insertion in April 2006, Ared joined the Herschel/Planck team as principal mechanical system engineer for both spacecraft. After launch in May 2009, he moved to the Gaia project as AIV and Launcher interface manager. As such, he is doing his best in organising and running the Gaia launch campaign in Kourou.

[Published: 19/12/2013]