Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center
NASA's Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H, initially called Integrated Mission Control Center, or IMCC), also known by its radio callsign, Houston, is the facility at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, that manages flight control for the United States human space program, currently involving astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The center is in Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center and is named after Christopher C. Kraft Jr., a NASA engineer and manager who was instrumental in establishing the agency's Mission Control operation, and was the first Flight Director.[1]
For other places with the same name, see Mission control center.The MCC currently houses one operational control room in Building 30 from which flight controllers command, monitor, and plan operations for the ISS. This room has many computer and data-processing resources to monitor, command and communicate with the station. The ISS control room operates continuously. A second control room in the same building, which formerly hosted the Shuttle flight control team, can be set up for ISS operations should the need arise (e.g., during repairs or hardware upgrades in the main room), and also hosts training simulations.
Location
1965
Charles Luckman
International
October 3, 1985
October 3, 1985
Backup Control Center and mission control facilities[edit]
In the event that the MCC-H is unavailable due to a hurricane or other foreseeable event, NASA has the option of quickly relocating to a temporary Backup Control Center (BCC) offsite. In 2017 for Hurricane Harvey, BCC was a hotel in Round Rock, Texas, about four hours away,[12] while in 2020 for Hurricane Laura the BCC was at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, the designated backup site since 2017.[13]
For more long-term use, NASA will relocate to a more robust but farther control center at the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC)[14] at Marshall Space Flight Center for ISS operations. In 2008 for Hurricane Ike, NASA activated Backup Control Centers in both Round Rock and Huntsville for specific duties.
Uncrewed US civilian satellites are controlled from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, while California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages robotic US space probes.