My Visit to Boeing's New Mission Control Center
When a satellite is released by a launched rocket, the compact spacecraft unfurls its solar panels and scoots into a geosynchronous orbit above the Earth.
However, the people controlling the satellite may be located in an El Segundo building 22,300 miles below.
On Monday, Boeing Co. opened to the media its new satellite Mission Control Center.
The $10 million, 20,500-square-foot center -- in a former Boeing shipping and receiving facility -- gives the company greater capacity and flexibility in operating and monitoring launched satellites.
The center is critical to Boeing's El Segundo satellite production business by controlling and testing satellites before the eventual handover of operation to the customer several weeks or months after launch.
"We've taken 40 years of Boeing satellite operations experiences and put them into this facility," Chris Cutroneo, Boeing Mission Control Center director, said.
The new facility, at Boeing's El Segundo campus, replaces an older center inside a Raytheon Co. building two miles away. That previous center was opened in 1996 when the Raytheon building was used by Hughes Aircraft Co., which sold off its aerospace operations to Boeing and Raytheon.
The new mission control center benefits from being closer to Boeing's engineers, who can respond to technical issues much quicker, said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, which encompasses the satellite business.
The new center also has the ability to support four U.S. government satellite launches simultaneously. The previous facility could handle only one government satellite deployment at a time.
"It's a recognition of our existing government business and wanting to support our customer as capably as possible," Cooning said.