Norwegian User Support and Operations Centre

Under the overall management of ESA, the European User Support and Operations Centres (USOCs) will carry out the majority of tasks related to preparation and for in-flight operation of different multi-user facilities. This approach makes the USOCs the link between scientists and the ISS-community through ESA and NASA. There are 9 User Support and Operations Centres in Europe, located in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

ESA has nominated the Norwegian User and Support Centre (N-USOC) as the facility Responsible Centre (FRC) for the EMCS. The N-USOC is an important contributor during planning, development, integration and execution of the different experiments that utilizes the EMCS onboard the ISS. Once the EMCS is powered up it is remotely controlled from N-USOC where all the telemetry is received and telecommands can be sent to the facility.

The N-USOC provides the users of the EMCS with communication and data processing infrastructure that allows real-time data monitoring and control of their experiments. Users may come from either a university or industry team.  The users work either at the N-USOC site in Norway or from their Users Home Base (UHB). In the last instance using an internet connection to the N-USOC.

During operation of the EMCS, the N-USOC is supported by Astrium GmbH (the payload developer). They provide hardware and software support from their industry site (Friedrichshafen, Germany) or from the N-USOC site when required.