The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is responsible for controlling ESA satellites and space probes. The centre is located in Darmstadt, Germany. It is Mission Control for most of the space projects of the ESA. Since its creation in 1967, the centre has operated 60 European space missions. ESOC also houses the Ground Facilities Control Centre (GFCC) that is responsible for remote operation of the ESTRACK network of Ground Stations and antennas.
Currently ESOC is operating the following spacecraft: XMM-Newton, the four Cluster spacecraft, INTEGRAL, Mars Express, Rosetta, Venus Express, GOCE, Herschel, Planck, and Cryosat-2
Recent high-profile missions that were controlled from ESOC include ERS-2, SMART-1 and Huygens.
Projects under preparation include: LISA Pathfinder, ADM-Aeolus, SWARM, the Sentinel series and Gaia.
Recently controlled through LEOP, and then handed over to EUMETSAT was MetOp-A.
This centre is also responsible for the development of the technology infrastructure it requires to support existing and planned missions, including Space Control and Operations Software (SCOS 2000), an adaptable software infrastructure for monitoring and controlling the various spacecraft.
Read more about European Space Operations Centre: History
Famous quotes containing the words european, space, operations and/or centre:
“In verity ... we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“At first thy little being came:
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are the same;
The space between, is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower.”
—Philip Freneau (1752–1832)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Marriage and deathless friendship, both should be inviolable and sacred: two great creative passions, separate, apart, but complementary: the one pivotal, the other adventurous: the one, marriage, the centre of human life; and the other, the leap ahead.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)