In the beginning of May, Carlos García, Barcelona Moon Team Surface Operations Manager traveled to Darmstadt to visit ESOC facilities (European Space Operations Center) and had a meeting with the company LSE Space Engineering & Operations AG.
During the meeting at LSE´s offices, its Managing Director Daniel Gestal and Engineer Carlos Zamora presented to the Barcelona Moon Team the capabilities of LSE in regard to the operations segment of the BMT lunar mission.
Carlos also visited ESA’s Operation Center with a close to the control and maintenance installations for ESA’s satellites. Carlos was able to visit the control rooms of several on-going missions like Mars Express, Rosetta and Venus Express. During the visit, Carlos met ESOC’s staff Octavio Camino and Jose Morales and discussed key concepts such as aircraft operations overview, ESA’s tracking stations situation, problems with space debris and the use of standard space software from ESA.
As a result of the visit some revisions will be done in the Mission Analysis with regard to the autonomy of the lunar rover and the communications architecture.