Luca had his first weekly crew conference yesterday with ESA mission directors. Mission director Roland Luettgens recounts:

ATV-4 is on its way to the International Space Station and everything is nominal, space-speak for ‘going as planned’. Today we had our first crew conference. Whenever an ESA astronaut is on the Space Station, we hold a crew conference once a week, usually on Thursday. Today we had the first conference since Luca arrived and of course we were very curious to get in touch with him. A typical crew conference lasts about 20 minutes and the atmosphere is informal, we can be ourselves and talk to Luca about things other than our normal daily work. So, how does this work?

Credits: NASA/ESA

At the Columbus Control Centre in Germany we turn on one of the two high-definition cameras that are in Columbus, and wait for Luca to arrive. Luca moves into the Columbus module so that we can see him. Once we are set, Luca calls us to start the conference: “Munich – Station, how do you read me?”. These are the words we are waiting for.

Unfortunately we could not see him today because of high beta-angles. The beta angle is the angle between the Station’s orbital plane and a line drawn from the Sun to the Earth. As the beta angle increases, the International Space Station is exposed to more sunlight per orbit, and at some points it is in constant sunlight – in other words the Station never passes  into the Earth’s shadow for extended periods of time. This can create thermal problems, and in this case the antennas used to send video down to Earth are not activated.

Sun glinting off Madagascar. Credits ESA/NASA

We heard Luca’s call at  10:15 this morning and responded: “Station – Munich, we read you loud and clear”. We agreed to have the first crew conference in Italian. “How are you doing in your new home, Luca?”. “It is so exciting and I do not want to miss a minute”, Luca replied. He is doing great up there!

We talked about a couple of upcoming activities and made sure we are well synchronised. After 20 minutes our time was over and Luca had to get on with his tasks for the day.

“Ciao Luca, ci sentiamo presto”.