 She is registered in Wilhelmshaven and replaced its predecessor of the same name.An order worth €124.4 million for a new research ship to replace the older research ship RV Sonne was placed by the German federal ministry for education and research (90%) together with the coastal states Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bremen and Hamburg (10%) in May 2011.The construction took place in Meyer Werft in Papenburg and the Sonne left the dock in April 2014.