ESA: Mars Express Support
VEGA supported ESA's Mars Express mission through spacecraft
platform operations support, payload operations, mission planning,
systems engineering, and simulation development.
Background
Mars Express is Europe’s first mission to the Red Planet and
also the first fully European mission to any planet. The European
Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is responsible for all the
operational aspects of Mars Express.
The operational control from ESOC started shortly after lift-off
of Soyuz/Fregat from Baikonur on 2 June 2003, initially preparing
the spacecraft for the Mars Orbit Insertion. Now the spacecraft,
orbiting around Mars, is performing science observation.
How VEGA helped
Mars Express was supported by the VEGA Flight Control Team based
at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. Our team, forming the main core of
spacecraft operations engineers, provided support on a 24-hour
basis and all 365 days in a year.
In the case of Mars Express (a low cost mission), where the
Flight Control Team is relatively small in comparison to other
space missions, we provided spacecraft engineers with long and
extensive operational experience so as to assume a number of roles
in parallel. The VEGA team comprised of engineers having previously
supported the ERS-1, ERS-2, CLUSTER, CLUSTER-2, ENVISAT, EURECA,
MSG-1 and HIPPARCOS missions.
Value delivered
The support that VEGA delivers on each ESA mission is unique and
in response to our customers' needs, which also change over the
life span of the project. In the case of the Mars Express mission,
our team provided the following support:
- Spacecraft Platform Operations Support
- Payload Operations
- Mission Planning Systems Engineering
- Technical co-ordination of simulator development
- Support on resolving Platform, Payload and Ground Segment
issues