Daniel de Chambure

Head of ESA's Kourou Office Daniel de Chambure passed away on 16 September 2023 at the age of 61, after a short period of severe illness. 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, Cluster II and Herschel/Planck missions.

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. A crowning achievement for which he will be especially remembered and celebrated was his work on launching the James Web 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.