Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
A Max-Planck Senate resolution transformed this department into a sub-institute of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics on May 15, 1963.
Another Senate resolution on March 8, 1991, finally established MPE as an autonomous institute within the Max Planck Society.
The increasingly complex tasks and international obligations have been mainly maintained by staff members with positions having limited duration and funded by external organizations.
During the early years, the scientific work at the Institute concentrated on the investigation of extraterrestrial plasmas and the magnetosphere of the Earth.
This work was performed with measurements of particles and electromagnetic fields as well as a specially developed ion-cloud technique using sounding rockets.
New observation techniques using satellites has necessitated the recording, processing and accessible storage of high data fluxes over long periods of time.
The satellite "Firewheel", in which many members of the Institute had invested years of work, was lost on May 23, 1980, because of a burning instability in the first stage of the launch rocket.
Its main research topics are astronomical observations in spectral regions which are only accessible from space because of the absorbing effects of the Earth's atmosphere, but also instruments on ground-based observatories are used whenever possible.
Many experiments of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) have to be carried out above the dense Earth's atmosphere using aircraft, rockets, satellites and space probes.
To run advanced extraterrestrial physics and state-of-the-art experimental astrophysics, the institute continues to develop high-tech instrumentation in-house.
This includes detectors, spectrometers, and cameras as well as telescopes and complete payloads (e.g. ROSAT and eROSITA) and even entire satellites (as in case of AMPTE and EQUATOR-S).
Their interaction while interpreting observations and propounding new hypotheses underlies the successful progress of the institute's research projects.
