Mission control center

• 1. Introduction

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  The mission control center for Project Mercury sat at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. One of its still-standing buildings has since been converted into a makeshift media bunker, available if a rocket explodes near the ground. A mission control center manages a space flight from launch until landing, or until the mission ends. Flight controllers and support personnel track every aspect using telemetry, the continuous data stream from the vehicle. Commands travel back through a network of ground stations. The team can include specialists in attitude control, power, propulsion, thermal management, orbital operations, and attitude dynamics. Each person carries responsibility for a separate discipline in the mission. Training falls to the flight controllers, who run extensive rehearsals inside the center before any launch. How many facilities like this exist around the world? In the American system, a launch control center in Florida holds authority over the booster and spacecraft until the rocket clears the tower. Only then does responsibility shift to a center in Houston.

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• 2. The American Network

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  Houston's center carries the full name Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center, located at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center and abbreviated MCC-H. It also oversees the American portions of the International Space Station.

  JPL in Pasadena, California operates the Space Flight Operations Facility, which manages all uncrewed NASA spacecraft operating beyond Earth's orbit. It also handles select research probes within that orbit and coordinates the Deep Space Network.

  At Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the Space Telescope Operations Control Center provides mission control for the Hubble Space Telescope. The Payload Operations and Integration Center at Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama monitors science activities aboard the International Space Station around the clock.

  The Applied Physics Laboratory near Baltimore, Maryland operates a Multimission Operations Center responsible for missions including MESSENGER and New Horizons. NOAA tracks its satellites from the Satellite Operations Control Center in Suitland, Maryland. Command and Data Acquisition facilities at Wallops, Virginia and Fairbanks, Alaska support that network. JPSS and GOES are among the satellites it manages.

  In Longueuil, Quebec, the Canadian Space Agency Robotics Mission Control Centre plans and conducts operations for Canadarm and Dextre aboard the ISS. Brazil runs two COPE facilities through the Brazilian Armed Forces: COPE-P in Brasilia and COPE-S in Rio de Janeiro. Germany alone contains four distinct mission control facilities, each serving a different part of the European space program.

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• 3. A Global Infrastructure

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  In Korolyov, Russia, the Mission Control Center of the Russian Federal Space Agency operates near the RKK Energia plant and goes by the acronym TsUP. Its active control room manages the Russian segment of the International Space Station. A separate hall within the same building serves as a memorial to the Mir space station. Its screens still display the final orbits Mir completed before burning up in the atmosphere. Russia also operates the Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Centre in Krasnoznamensk.

  The European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, known as ESOC, handles ESA's satellites and deep-space probes. In Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, the German Space Operations Center manages missions for DLR and other customers. The Columbus Control Centre, also at the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, provides mission control for the European Columbus research laboratory at the ISS. Oberpfaffenhofen is home to one of the two Galileo Control Centres operating Europe's navigation satellite system; the second is in Fucino, Italy.

  At the Toulouse Space Centre in France, the CNES ATV Control Centre once managed the Automated Transfer Vehicles that regularly resupplied the International Space Station. Those vehicles have since retired, and the center now controls the civilian Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission and the military CERES satellite constellation. In Turin, Italy, the Rover Operations Control Centre is designated as the future mission control for the ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin. It will take up that role when the rover begins its mission.

  China's Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center handles Shenzhou crewed missions. Its campus, named Aerospace City by its designers, occupies a suburb northwest of Beijing. India's Master Control Facility, run by the Indian Space Research Organisation, is located at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. At the Tsukuba Space Center in Japan, JAXA operates separate control centers for the Kibo ISS research laboratory and the H-II Transfer Vehicle resupply flights. JAXA's satellite operations are also based at the same campus. Beyond government installations, private companies have established their own mission control facilities to manage commercial fleets and launch programs.

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• 4. Commercial Operators

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  SpaceX manages primary launch control for its Falcon rockets from a facility in Hawthorne, California, carrying the designation MCC-X. Axiom Space operates its own Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, placing it in the same city as NASA's main crewed flight facility.

  Boeing's Satellite Development Center in El Segundo, California includes a Mission Control Center responsible for several military satellites. Lockheed Martin runs the A2100 Space Operations Center in Newtown, Pennsylvania, also dedicated to military satellite operations.

  Parsons Corporation operates the Parsons Space Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It supports command and control for both the NOAA POES satellite series and the DARPA Blackjack program. Space Systems/Loral maintains a Mission Control Center in Palo Alto, California.

  In Tromso, Norway, Kongsberg Satellite Services commands 13 satellites from its space operations center. Satellite operator SES controls a fleet of more than 50 satellites from centers in Princeton, New Jersey and Luxembourg. The spread of commercial facilities from Hawthorne to Tromso means orbital management is no longer solely the work of national programs.

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