Visiting the Space Operations Centre of the European Space Agency

I visited the Space Operations Centre of the European Space Agency (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. ESOC controls ESA’s Earth Observation, space telescopes and planetary missions. The tour was very interesting and included some very cool exhibits, such as actual engineering models of famous ESA missions: Rosetta to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Euclid space telescope, BepiColombo en route to Mercury and JUICE en route to the Jupiter’s moons (the latter three were functional). The models are used for testing and problem solving. I also visited some of the mission control rooms (no pictures of the control rooms allowed); the main control room was hosting a rehearsal for the launch of the EarthCARE mission – very cool! Pictures added to the Germany album: