German Space Operations Center

48°05′15″N 11°16′53″E / 48.087453°N 11.281474°E / 48.087453; 11.281474

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "German Space Operations Center" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (December 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 9,106 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Deutsches Raumfahrt-Kontrollzentrum]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|de|Deutsches Raumfahrt-Kontrollzentrum}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

The German Space Operations Center (GSOC; German: Deutsches Raumfahrt-Kontrollzentrum) is the mission control center of German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany.

Tasks

The GSOC performs the following tasks in national and international spaceflight:

• Operation of scientific satellites
• Operation of commercial satellites
• Operation of human spaceflight
• Expansion and operation of the communication infrastructure
• Research and development of new technologies in the field of space operations

History

After the Federal Republic of Germany decided in the 1960s to launch a national space program and to participate in international space projects, the idea of having its own space control center became concrete. In 1967, then Federal Minister of Finance Franz Josef Strauss laid the foundation stone for the first building complex, which was opened a little later.

Until 1985, the Oberpfaffenhofen site of the then German Aerospace Research and Testing Institute (DFVLR) increasingly concentrated on spaceflight. The human spaceflight received special attention. The GSOC then accompanied two crewed missions: During STS-61-A in 1985, GSOC took over the control of the Spacelab, while flight control continued from NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center was acquired. For the first time, the Payload Operation Control Center (POCC) of a US space mission was directed outside of NASA. For the first time, a human spaceflight was partially monitored from outside the USA or the Soviet Union.^[1] During this mission, then Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss announced on 5 November 1985 an extensive investment program with which the role of Oberpfaffenhofen in European spaceflight should be increased.

The failure of Ariane 3 in 1985 and the Challenger disaster in 1986 slowed the development of the Oberpfaffenhofen and the GSOC. The investment program gave the GSOC a new building, Building 140. Construction began in April 1989.

In 1993, GSOC accompanied the entire operation with STS-55 and had full payload control via the Spacelab. This was the first time that there was unfiltered access to all data.

Missions operated by GSOC

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (January 2020)

Crewed missions

Earth Observation and Science

Communication and Navigation

See also

• German space programme

References

External links

• The German Space Operations Center