— Ch. 1 · The Architecture of Flight Control —
Mission control center.
~4 min read · Ch. 1 of 5
A staff of flight controllers and other support personnel monitor all aspects of the mission using telemetry. They send commands to the vehicle using ground stations. Personnel supporting the mission from an MCC can include representatives of the attitude control system, power, propulsion, thermal, attitude dynamics, orbital operations and other subsystem disciplines. The training for these missions usually falls under the responsibility of the flight controllers. These teams typically include extensive rehearsals in the MCC before any actual launch occurs.
NASA Launch Control Center controls NASA launch missions prior to liftoff from facilities located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida. Responsibility for the booster and spacecraft remains with the Launch Control Center until the booster has cleared the launch tower. Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center assumes responsibility for crewed missions after liftoff. The facility is located in Houston, Texas at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston also manages the U.S. portions of the International Space Station (ISS).
American Launch And Orbital Operations
Mercury Control Center was located on the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and was used during Project Mercury. One of its still standing buildings now serves as a makeshift bunker for the media if a rocket explodes near the ground. Multi-Mission Operations Center at the Ames Research Center handles uncrewed spacecraft outside Earth's orbit. The Space Flight Operations Facility is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It manages all of NASA's uncrewed spacecraft outside Earth's orbit and several research probes within along with the Deep Space Network.
Space Telescope Operations Control Center is located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This center provides mission control for the Hubble Space Telescope. Payload Operations and Integration Center sits at the Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Science activities aboard the International Space Station are monitored around the clock there. The Multimission Operations Center at the Applied Physics Laboratory near Baltimore, Maryland controls spacecraft including the MESSENGER and New Horizons missions.