Excursion to the ESA Satellite Control Center

Visit to the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt as part of the M.Sc. course Gravity Field Missions.
ESA Satellitenkontrollzentrum ESA - J. Mai
ESA Main Control Center in Darmstadt

As part of the Gravity Field Missions course, students from the M.Sc. programs in Geodesy and Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics visited the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt. Most of the European Space Agency's (ESA) satellite missions are controlled from ESOC, including Earth Explorer missions, Sentinel missions of the Copernicus program, and various planetary missions. During a guided tour of the site, participants were able to explore the main control room (see picture) and other mission-specific rooms, as well as numerous satellite models, some of which were functional 1:1 copies. In addition, interesting insights were provided into the challenges of controlling satellites, particularly in connection with the GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) mission, which was also operated from ESOC between 2009 and 2013. We would like to thank ESA and Darmstadt Marketing for organizing and conducting the tour.