Mission Control Center Logo

A mission control center (MCC, sometimes called a flight control center or operations center) is a facility that manages space flights, usually from the point of launch until landing or the end of the mission. It is part of the ground segment of spacecraft operations. A staff of flight controllers and other support personnel monitor all aspects of the mission using telemetry, and send commands to the vehicle using ground stations. Personnel supporting the mission from an MCC can include representatives of the attitude control system, power, propulsion, thermal, attitude dynamics, orbital operations and other subsystem disciplines. The training for these missions usually falls under the responsibility of the flight controllers, typically including extensive rehearsals in the MCC.


We all will have time this month with this conjunction to discover deeper layers in our relationships of all kinds. Man or woman, we will not feel so agreeable and compromising with our loved ones right now and we will feel more in touch with what is truly important and needed for us. There is more inner strength and daring to stand up for our needs and express our desires and make changes in our relationships. Full moons on different days. Where you live on earth rarely makes a difference as to whether the moon is full, quarter or new. This is because it takes the moon almost a month to travel around the earth and it only takes a day for the earth to turn around once. So in comparison, the moon sort of sits in the sky and waits for us to see what phase it is in. Still, there are times when the moon will be full on different calendar days in different areas of the earth. Life as we know it depends on the presence of three ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, mainly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. With this new discovery of the existence of hydrogen, in the tattle-tale plume shooting out from the surface of Enceladus, Cassini has revealed to the prying eyes of curious astronomers, that this small, icy moon has almost all of these ingredients important for habitability. At this point, Cassini has not detected the presence of phosphorus and sulfur in the hidden subsurface ocean of this distant small world, but many planetary scientists suspect that they will eventually be detected because the rocky core of Enceladus is believed to be similar to certain meteorities that contain these two critical elements.