The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is excited to join a wide range of local scientific institutes to celebrate “25 Jahre Wissenschaftsstadt Darmstadt” (25 years of Darmstadt as a City of Science) this year.

As part of the celebrations, ESOC will host a series of special visiting days over the coming months in which visitor groups will experience tours of ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt. Guests will visit mission control rooms and models of our satellites, learn about our work flying the most ambitious, first-of-their-kind space missions where no-one has gone before, and experience where missions come alive. More details, dates and how to register to attend these visits will be available soon.

ESOC is the European Space Agency’s mission control centre and Europe's gateway to space. It is responsible for the operation of all ESA satellites and the related infrastructure on the ground, such as ESA’s global network of satellite tracking stations.

ESOC is also home to ESA’s Space Safety programme, which focuses on the detection, prediction and mitigation of potential risks from objects or natural phenomena in space that could be hazardous to life and infrastructure on Earth and in space.

Since 1967, ESOC has successfully operated more than 80 satellites, including Huygens, Mars Express, Rosetta, Gaia, BepiColombo, Solar Orbiter and satellites in the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation fleet. These satellites provide valuable scientific data on a wide variety of topics, from the origins of the Universe to detailed observations of the processes driving climate change.