The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) located on the west side of Darmstadt, is the main mission control centre for the European Space Agency (ESA), controlling and carefully monitoring unmanned space missions i.e satellites.

 

As a satellite is launched, ESOC take responsibility of that satellite. For example, ESOC locate any technical issues regarding satellites that they control and systematically solve them.When a satellite is launched in to orbit, ESOC make sure it follows a path that has been precisely calculated. A team of 80 people work on this in ESOC. The flight dynamicists calculate the exact launch time and the precise orbit for the satellite, whether it is supposed to orbit the Earth or orbit the other planets.

 

Personnel at EPOC:

 

A team of around 800 people work with ESOC, with approximately 250 permanent staff and 550 contractors. In ESOC, mission analysers, engineers, ESA navigators work together to calculate and determine orbits of satellites, along with the development and improvement of softwares used on the satellites. Staff at ESOC travel to different ESA organisations located in different countries to work on different satellites.  

 

The figure opposite shows the Main Control Room (MCR) at ESOC.