Toni Tolker-Nielsen took up duty as acting Director of Space Transportation on 1 July 2023, his latest assignment in a long history of leadership at ESA.

A Danish national and mechanical engineer, Toni Tolker-Nielsen began his career with APV ANHYDRO in Copenhagen in 1983 before taking a role at CERN in Geneva. He joined ESA in 1987 – initially working on pointing and tracking systems for laser communication systems – and in 2003 moved to what was then known as the Launchers Directorate, with responsibility for the return-to-flight programme for Ariane 5 ECA (Evolution Cryotechnique type A) after its launch failure in December 2002.

Mr Tolker-Nielsen went on to oversee significant changes to the organisation of the European launcher industry initiated in the wake of the ECA failure – changes which helped deliver the very successful Ariane 5 programme which ended in July 2023.

He was then appointed ESA Inspector General – an Executive Board position with the duty to guarantee technical and managerial excellence across ESA. Mr Tolker-Nielsen later headed Earth Observation projects and acted as Director of Earth Observation Programmes from 2021, when Josef Aschbacher took up duty as ESA Director General.