Munich is ready for launch

Today’s blog posts will come from inside the European Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, just outside of Munich, Germany.

Known in short as Col-CC, or by its call sign ‘Munich’, this centre is part of the international ground network that commands and controls the various International Space Station modules. From here they are in direct contact with the European Columbus laboratory in orbit, monitoring and configuring the module and its experiment facilities to make sure everything is working properly.

Although nowhere near as cold as in Baikonur, the snowfall here in Munich adds a little bit of the flavour of the launch site in Kazakhstan where launch day temperatures as low as -20 deg C are expected.

ESA astronaut Pedro Duque, currently heading up ESA’s team of mission controllers at Col-CC, will be on hand for expert insight. In October 2003, Pedro was launched to the ISS with the Soyuz TMA-3 mission. He spent 10 days in space for his Cervantes mission. He also flew on Space Shuttle Discovery with the STS-95 mission in 1998. If you haven’t read it before, Pedro’s space diary is very well worth a read.