Office national d'études et de recherches aérospatiales

ONERA ( Office National d' Study and Research aérospatiales ) is a French public research organizations and the French counterpart to the German DLR.

ONERA employs approximately 2000 employees in nine locations, including 1,500 scientists and engineers.

Wind tunnel

The ONERA has various research wind tunnels:

• In Meudon, near Paris, the original site of ONERA;
• In Fauga - Mauzac in the French Pyrenees;
• Avrieux at Modane in the French Alps.

The last two include plants of different sizes with which aerodynamically optimal forms of transport ( cars, planes, etc.) are to be determined. The largest of these facilities is also the oldest, they almost reached supersonic speed. This wind tunnel is a German development, in the last years of the Second World War, it was built by German engineers at the entrance of the Ötztal in Haiming. At the end of the war, the not quite completed wind tunnel was dismantled by the French to be engaging near Modane again. The fan of the wind tunnel is operated directly by water power from high-altitude reservoirs. This driving principle had already been developed and built by the German engineers in the Ötztal. Even the administration building of the wind tunnel in Avrieux was created by the German architectural plans. The propeller fan has been renewed until 2006. The wind tunnel has a diameter of the measuring distance of 8 m and a close to reaching the speed of sound velocity still one of the very large wind tunnels in the world.

Sky, sea and space surveillance

The ONERA has also developed the Nostradamus and the GRAVES radar system.