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Men in space and men on the Earth may be thousands of miles away from each other. Still, the crews aboard orbital spacecraft and stations, unmanned probes in deep space and their watchers back on the Earth get coordinately on to fulfill the project programs.
The work done by thousands of people is coordinated by Mission Control Center situated in Korolev.
Built in 1973 Mission Control Center practically controls missions of "Mir" and "Salute" orbital stations, "Sojuz TM" spaceferries, "Progress" space trucks, space-flying science kits for orbital complexes, reusable space shuttles "Buran" and unmanned space probes "Venus", "Mars", "Zond", "Vega" and "Phobos". A scientific body too, the Center does its own research solving specific control tasks and looking for ways and means of solutions.
Main activity of Mission Control Center:
- to realize flight control over different space vehicles (manned orbital complexes, spacecrafts, automatic interplanetary stations, economic and scientific satellites) and to provide simultaneous control over several vehicles dealing with different space programs;
- to carry out scientific research, to create and to introduce the latest information processing technologies, to work out methods, algorithms and facilities in order to implement control, telemetry, ballistic and navigation tasks;
- to work out and to create automatic ground complex in order to control economic and scientific space vehicles. This complex consists of the control center, command and tracking stations (they are in Moscow Region, Krasnoyarsk, and the Far East) and telecommunication system employing retransmission satellites, ground broadband and voice communication channels;
- to work out and to create a united coordinate-timing assurance system including experimental research and development of application methods of space navigation system in national economy; design and creation of information analytic center of the coordinate-timing assurance system.