Mission Control Conference System Enables Global Collaboration

摘要

Today, conference calling is so easy and common that it is essentially unremarkable. With a phone number and meeting link, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people from anywhere on the globe can collaborate. But behind the scenes, all of these simple operations take quite a bit of complicated technology that didn't exist before the 1980s when NASA Mission Control decided to improve the system by which its engineers, technicians, and astronauts communicate. During any mission, information flows constantly and a spacecraft's fuel levels, the weather at the landing site, biomet-ric readings from the astronauts, and more are monitored. In the 1950s, NASA built a complex system that connected people on the ground and in space through a network of 18 ground stations and three ships in different oceans, with the central hub at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.