The European Space Agency, the German space agency DLR, and the Free State of Bavaria have signed a letter of intent to add Moon mission control capabilities to the ESA Columbus Control Centre.
Officially opened in October 2004, the Columbus Control Centre (Col-CC), which is located in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, is used to ensure the International Space Station’s Columbus module and the science within operate smoothly and without interruption.
In the short to medium term, the evolutions outlined in the agreement signed between the three parties will enable operational support for Europe’s contributions to the lunar Gateway space station.
Europe’s primary contributions to Gateway are the European System Providing Refueling, Infrastructure and Telecommunications (ESPRIT) module and the International Habitation Module (I-HAB), which ESA is developing in collaboration with Japan. The agency is also responsible for building the European Service Module (ESM) for the Orion spacecraft, which will ferry astronauts to and from the space station.
While the planned updates to the control centre are still to be implemented, Col-CC has already supported a mission to the Moon. During the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission, flight data from the first ESM was relayed via the control centre to the ESA ESM operations team at ESTEC in the Netherlands.
Although the ESA announcement did not indicate when the agency expects to have completed implementing the planned updates, they will likely need to be completed before the launch of I-HAB, which is currently expected to occur in September 2028.
While the control centre will initially be used to support the lunar Gateway space station, ESA also envisions its function being extended to missions to the lunar surface.
ESA and DLR are not the only European space agencies that are building out Moon mission control capabilities. The Italian space agency ASI signed a €3.5 million contract with ALTEC in December 2023 to build the agency’s Lunar Robotic Mission Centro di Simulazione e Controllo Missioni Robotiche Lunari (Lunar Robotic Mission Simulation and Control Center). The control center will complement the European Space Agency Rover Operation Control Center (ROCC) in Turin.
