European space loses chief of Spaceport
With great sadness, we announce the passing of Daniel de Chambure on 16 September 2023 at the age of 61, after a short period of severe illness. His loss will be deeply felt by his many colleagues and friends at ESA and by the wider space community.
Daniel spent 35 years working at ESA, having joined the Directorate of Space Engineering and Technology in 1988. Five years later, he moved to the Directorate of Science, where he made fundamental contributions to the excellence of ESA’s scientific programmes including the XMM-Newton mission to study black holes, the Cluster II mission to examine the interaction between the charged particles of the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere and the Herschel/Planck mission to investigate the formation of stars.
In 2005, Daniel moved to the Directorate of Space Transportation where he championed the Ariane 5 launcher and steadily increased the performance of its successor version, the Ariane 5 ECA. He helped develop specific missions for the launchers, including launching four Galileo satellites, the BepiColombo mission to Mercury and the Juice mission to study Jupiter’s icy moons.
A crowning achievement for which he will be especially remembered and celebrated was his work on launching the James Webb Space Telescope on board an Ariane 5 in December 2021.
From April 2022, Daniel headed the ESA office at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, where he rapidly gained the trust and respect of the Guiana Space Centre community through his professionalism and pragmatism.
Outside work, Daniel excelled at organising events and travels with his family. Amazingly, he also found the time to train for and complete several marathons.
Daniel will be dearly missed by all the friends and colleagues who worked with him. We offer our deepest condolences and thoughts at this difficult time to his wife Sophie, his five children and seven grandchildren.