This blog is written by the LEOP team.
Let us leave Biomass and French Guyana for a few moments and zoom across the Atlantic Ocean to have a look what has been going on in Darmstadt, Germany, during the last few days. Behind the gates of the European Space Operations Center (ESOC), a huge team is getting ready to take control of Biomass after its separation from the Vega-C launcher on April 29th.
Since the end of January, the Biomass Mission Control Team – composed of ESOC engineers complemented by ESTEC project and industry support – has been participating to Launch and Early Operations Phase simulations during which they have been rehearsing nominal and contingency scenarios. All is set up for these simulations to feel real, so that the teams can familiarize themselves to the ESOC infrastructures and procedures, and learn to deal with spacecraft anomalies in real time.
From ground station outages to failed on-board sensors or even key personnel sickness, the simulation officers have run us through many situations that might happen right after launch or during the deployment of the reflector. And while we certainly hope they will not happen in reality, we are now ready to tackle them if they would.
While some more simulations will be keeping the ESOC flight control engineers busy in the coming weeks, the session of April 8th and 9th was the last one involving industry and project support. The next time they will be back on console, real satellite data will be displayed on their screens.
The Mission Control Team is now ready for launch! To the launch support team in Guyana, we wanted to let you know that from this side of the Atlantic, we will be monitoring this blog for the progress of the pre-launch activities. Rest assured that when Biomass wakes up after separation, we will be there to take care of it. And in the meanwhile, here are a few pictures taken during the last simulations session!
ESOC’s Main Control Room – the heart of operations
The Project Support Room – where industry and project experts are ready to investigate any spacecraft anomaly
Flight dynamics: where the orbital computation magic happens
AOCS engineers from operations, project and industry – Failed sun sensors and high-friction reaction wheels are no match for them!
The simulation officers about to break yet another part of the simulated satellite
A happy mission control team after another successful simulation!
Congratulations to All !
Leave a Reply