ESA Operations

Video: 00:58:00 Sat in a windowless office beneath ESA’s Main Control Room in Darmstadt, Germany, two Simulations Officers have complete control over the Juice spacecraft and ESA’s deep space ground stations across the globe – and they take full advantage.These aren’t the real […]

“You can read everything there is to know about driving a car, but you won’t really understand what it’s like to drive one until you get behind the wheel. That’s what it’s like to fly your software in orbit,” says David Evans, ESA’s OPS-SAT Space Lab manager.Over the last year, 12 […]

In 2023 satnav receivers are everywhere: in our phones, our cars, and drones, in fixed infrastructure, aboard boats, trains and aircraft. They are also in space: more than 95% of all the satellites in low-Earth orbit carry satnav receivers to calculate their position. The additional signals from […]

Video: 00:19:50 Recently, Andreas Mogensen, now getting ready for his ‘Huginn’ mission to the ISS in 2023, stopped by ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to meet with some of the experts who keep our satellites flying.Andreas usually works at NASA’s Johnson Space […]

Image: ESA’s Estrack network tracks DART in the vital moments before asteroid impact

Image: Solar Orbiter tracks solar features during closest approach

Image: Webb is due to launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at the earliest on 24 December. It will journey on a direct escape trajectory towards its target orbit more than 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. Part of ESA’s Estrack cooperative network, the […]