Space: Operational management of unmanned missions

The media reports about the missions of space agencies, in which telescopes on spacecraft produce incredible images of galaxies with their stars and planets and scientists gain new insights into the formation and structure of the universe. But how do such missions come about and how do they work? Who are the people who make these missions possible and who carry them out? The author Nebil Çinar works as a spacecraft controller for the European Space Agency (ESA) and controls four such missions. In this book, he gives the reader an insight into a world that was previously only accessible to a privileged few. He introduces the different types of missions carried out by the space agencies, explains the process of a mission, explains the structure and function of a spacecraft and describes the work of the people in the control centres. Without focusing on a specific mission, the daily work of the spacecraft controller and the role of the flight control team is explained in general terms.

The author Nebil Çinar has a degree in computer science and works as a spacecraft controller at the European Space Agency ESA, where he controls four spacecraft in the astronomy department.