The Norwegian User Support and Operations Centre (N-USOC) is one of nine European control centres for European Space Agency’s payload and science operations on the International Space Station (ISS). These USOCs are located in Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.
Under the overall management of ESA, the European User Support and Operations Centres (USOCs) act as the link between the scientific user communities and ESA's Columbus Control Centre in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, NASA's Payload Operations Integration Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the Russian Mission Control Centre in Moscow. Columbus is ESA’s own module and Europes laboratory at ISS.
During the pre-launch phase, the USOCs are concerned with activities such as ground model operations, experiment-procedure development, payload and experiment optimisation and calibration and support to crew training activities.
During the in-orbit payload operations, the USOCs receive facility and experiment data and perform, in coordination with the Columbus Control Centre, the operations of the payloads for which they are responsible.
The USOCs are also responsible for the interaction with the scientists in disseminating experiment data to them, and receiving and processing requests for experiment scheduling and direct commanding
The mission of N-USOC is to provide qualified support to the ISS microgravity research activities in general. Specifically, N-USOC is the responsible for two payloads in the Columbus module: the European Modular Cultivation System (EMCS) and Vessel ID System.
As Facility Responsible Centre (FRC) for these two research facilities, N-USOC is an important contributor during development of new experiments that will require the use of these facilities. N-USOC is also responsible for the integration of new experiments in the overall ESA and ISS planning. Remote operations of these facilities and ongoing experiments are performed by the N-USOC control centre, where all the telemetry is received and commands can be sent to each facility.
N-USOC provides the users, who are part of scientific communities at universities or research and industry establishments, of these facilities with data from the experiments. In addition, the N.USOC control centre provides the communication and data processing infrastructure needed to allow real-time monitoring and control of their experiments.
The lead industrial partner for EMCS is EADS Astrium. For Vessel ID System, N-USOCs main partner is the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI).