Rendezvous of Europe’s Most Sophisticated Spaceship Set for 2008
“Today is our biggest achievement so far after more than seven years of efforts at the ATV Control Center,” said Bob Chesson, ESA’s manager for Human Spaceflight and Exploration Operations. “It’s a big jump for spaceflight operations in Europe, with the ATV Control Center teams proving they can operate effectively in the ISS environment, which is not an easy thing.”
The European Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle is a highly unmanned spacecraft that we will become very familiar to us over the years. A couple of days ago, a simulation on Earth occurred between three human spaceflight mission control centers in three entirely different countries, with the plans being made for a launching in 2008 for Europe’s most highly sophisticated spacecraft the have ever made. Are those involved excited—yes!
The three mission controls are located in: Houston, Texas; Moscow, Russia; and Toulouse, France. Of the three controls, ATV in France was in charge of the lead mission control center for man-rated operations, while Moscow and Houston supported and authorized the actual ISS rendezvous in real time. A prestigious building, the ATV in France is split into 9 subsystems, interacting with big name partners—the International Space Station Mission Control Centers in Houston and Moscow, Redu Artemis Mission Control Center, and the Columbus Control Center.
As lead position, the ATV Control Center in France had 30-members who were in charge of the operation and sending of the go commands to the manless automated spacecraft. It has been defined through certain crew procedures whenever they are in orbit, that allow the ISS crew to perform certain operations on the ATV. These can be part of nominal operations or contingencies. A few examples are the monitoring of ATV during its approach to the ISS or as part of the cargo operations, during its phase of attachment.
With each of the control centers’ having a specific role that was sequentially clearly defined, the final simulation was a work of pure art. Starting about eight hours before a complex docking to the ISS, every scheduled step had to be performed as if in synch with the ATV-CC, with all necessary tasks needing to be executed and respected in each of the different centers that were involved and the ISS crew, who were simulated by Moscow crew representatives. The ESA compared it to “three different groups of musicians located in different parts of the world, and in different time zones…” Yet they all played as one single orchestra without hitting any wrong notes, “each playing its part in time.”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
