EMCS - Operation of an ESA Payload in a NASA Rack

摘要

The European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2006. Originally it was installed in the EXPRESS Rack 3 located in the US Laboratory "Destiny" but in 2008 the rack was moved to the ESA "Columbus" Laboratory. The Norwegian User Support and Operations Centre (N-USOC) is the Facility Responsible Centre for the EMCS. The EMCS is an ESA payload in a NASA EXPRESS Rack, hence the EMCS Operators interact with both the NASA Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) in Huntsville and the Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC) in Oberpfaffenhofen. The communication flow depends on whether the experiment running in the EMCS is an European or American experiment. In addition to the two control centers, the operator must interact with ESA, the science team, engineering support and NASA Ames Research Center (if U.S. experiment) or other industry teams responsible for the Experiment Unique Equipment (EUE) developed for the specific experiment. In this paper the complex EMCS operation scenario will be described and challenges and lessons learned will be discussed.