Manned Space-laboratories Control Center (MSCC) operations concept

The initiation of the (German-) nationally funded control center for manned spaceflight operations triggered by the invitation of President Reagan to ESA, Japan, and Canada in 1984 to join the International Space Station Freedom Program is recalled. The requirements for a Manned Space-Laboratories Control Center (MSCC) as defined at the beginning of the planning and construction process in 1987 and the resulting modifications during the various programmatic scenario changes on NASA and ESA side between 1987 and now are presented. The validity of the original requirements with respect to the current scenario, which asks for a logical evolution from the execution of the D-2 mission in January 1993 via the European Columbus Precursor flights (in particular the E-1 mission) towards Columbus Attached Laboratory (APM)-operations by the end of this century are discussed. The resulting tasks of the MSCC for the various missions, the current configuration, and the ensuing operations concept leading from a more centralized concept for D-2 towards a decentralized payload operations concept for the APM and the implications with respect to European and International interfaces are presented. The planned Columbus MSCC facility architecture and its expected modifications introduced by the ESA Ministerial Conference in Munich (Nov. 1991) and follow-on discussions are briefly addressed. The last chapter outlines the planned services to be provided by the MSCC to the decentralized User (experimenter) community. Issues like decentralized mission planning on executional level, command validation, data flow coordination, archiving services, and telescience capabilities are highlighted from a MSCC point of view.