Columbus Control Center – Operating the European laboratory at ISS

Paper number

IAC-07-B3.3.02

Author

Mr. Thomas Kuch, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany

Coauthor

Dr. Dieter Sabath, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany

Year

2007

Abstract

The paper describes the Columbus Control Center (Col-CC), the European ISS control center that lately joined the club of ISS mission control centers in Moscow, Houston and Huntsville. It took some time to reach that goal. In 1998 the European Space Agency ESA awarded the German Aerospace Center DLR to design, develop and implement the Columbus Control Center at its premises in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Germany. In 2002 a core mission operations team was built up. An integrated team of ESA, industry and control center staff started to define processes and implemented first operations products and tools. This was accompanied by regular meetings with the international partners in the U.S. and Russia. With intensive training and numerous simulations the team was able to gain experience and is now eagerly waiting for the launch of Columbus. However, thanks to the involvement in some operational activities the Col-CC staff has already been able to gain operational ISS experience.    

After the inauguration in October 2004 Col-CC supported the Eneide mission in April 2005 when the Italian ESA-Astronaut Roberto Vittori flew onboard a Soyuz to the ISS where he spent 10 days. Another very important milestone was the operations support for ESA’s Astrolab mission. The Astrolab mission was of major importance for Europe and particularly for Germany because it implied the first long duration flight of ESA-astronaut Thomas Reiter, an astronaut of German nationality. The paper will describe the tasks of Col-CC and the experiences made with that first operational long-term mission from July to December 2006. The paper will also show how the Columbus Control Center was able to reach the operational readiness status for the Columbus mission which is set for a launch date later in 2007. Despite the concentration on the challenging Columbus Assembly and Checkout phase emphasis is already laid on the following increments for the European ISS operations. The Columbus control center is embedded in the overall ISS scenario and the paper also describes which Col-CC subsystems have been integrated in the past years. 

Early 2006 ESA transferred the operational tasks and responsibilities to the hands of the Industrial Operator. This approach creates beneficial synergies between the Columbus manufacturer and the experts at the control center. The cooperation will be intensified with ESA, as the leading agency, the scientific users and the payload providers.

Abstract document

IAC-07-B3.3.02.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-07-B3.3.02.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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