Realtime space

This week, ESA experts are joining colleagues from across the spaceflight community for the biennial SpaceOps technical conference in Marseilles, France, focusing on the craft of mission control.

Engineers, scientists and managers from space agencies, academic and research institutions and industry around the world are sharing the latest developments, newest techniques and cutting-edge technologies from the discipline of spacecraft operations, as well as conducting technical interchanges on all aspects of spacecraft operations.

ESA participants are expected to present 55 technical papers at this year's SpaceOps, while many more will be presented by engineers and other industrial experts who work on site at ESA locations.

This image highlights a new dashboard on display at SpaceOps that shows the realtime status of ESA ground stations and the satellites with which they are in contact.  

As 'the' European space agency, ESA helps organise SpaceOps events and is one of the world's leading technical agencies supporting the critical yet often unseen work to ensure intercompatibility and technical standards for spacecraft operations. This ensures, for instance, that a spacecraft flown by a partner agency can communicate and download science data via ESA's ground station network, and vice versa, reducing risk, boosting return on investment and optimising expensive resources for all.

More information

ESOC - where missions come alive