ATV Control Centre team – a visitor reports

I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien
Sting, 1987

Ronja, intern at ATV-CC

Editor’s note: Ronja Pawellek is a recent high school graduate from Darmstadt, Germany. Languages and experiencing different cultures have always been her passion. Hence, it is no surprise that her curiosity has already led her to a number of European countries, including Finland where she did a school year abroad at the age of 16. Ronja says she fell in love with the French language upon her first lesson, and since then the twenty-year-old has planned one day to live in France, at least for a while.
After graduating from high school earlier this year, she finally put her wish into action before she heads to university in 2012. During this several-months-long cultural adventure, Ronja had the opportunity in November 2011 to spend two weeks as an intern at ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle Control Centre in Toulouse. The first part of her serialised report appears below; later updates will follow in the coming days.

Maybe you were always fascinated by technique, by engineering, by physics and by space. Well, for me, mathematics was always my great enemy at school — and physics interested me long as it stayed theoretical and left out any calculations. Nevertheless, I was interested to find out more about the people who work in these areas, so during my stay in France, I travelled to the south to do a two-week internship with the ESA Operations Management Team at the ATV Control Centre at the CNES — Centre National d’Etudes Spaciales — establishment in Toulouse.

These two weeks allowed me to get a look behind the curtain and see how an international work place functions, how its people cooperate and in particular who are these people whose project and passion — piloting a cargo vessel to the ISS — are so unusual.

Entering a whole new universe

Of course, I did know what ESA’s job is; and I knew that CNES Toulouse is an important centre where the operation of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is being calculated and managed. Everything else was based on my imagination.

So I stepped in on my first day, all agog with curiosity…
I had my freshly acquired badge dangling around my neck, which identified me as an ESA intern and which, so I hoped, would open me many a door. I was impressed: ATV-CC is huge — like a village of its own.

Kris Capelle, Mission Director and my internship advisor, introduced me to the team.

And again, I was impressed. These were the people responsible for actually operating the ATV and watching over it as it makes its journey through space.

Warm welcome

Maybe I had been expecting men in black suits and women with fancy hair, but, in any case, I was rather surprised to meet people who were very down-to-earth. There was this very friendly, familial ambience in the air, blended with a great deal of enthusiasm.

They kidded around – but made jokes I actually got. Because, when it came to ‘tech talk’, even though I understood the language, I hardly understood a word of what was being said. With all the acronyms they use, they sort of create a language of its own!

In the beginning, I generally had a hard time to at least memorize the names of the people to whom Kris introduced me, let alone their function. I scrutinized everything. The posters of complex apparatus on the walls, photographs of astronauts and places far, far away, sketches cluttered with loads and loads of numbers…

I literally felt like an alien.

Part II to follow

Do you have a question? Contact Ronja directly.