Carnegie Mellon to build Moonshot command center to monitor space missions

Anyone old enough to remember those static shots of the men in button-down shirts and ties sitting in front of computer screens during NASA’s Mercury and Apollo endeavors likely understands the importance of having a mission control for space flights.

Carnegie Mellon University certainly does.

That’s why the school is building Moonshot Mission Control, a new command center designed to monitor CMU’s upcoming Iris, MoonRanger and future space missions. Iris is scheduled to fly to the moon this year. It will be the smallest, first American, first university built and first student built rover on the moon.

The new command center will be headquartered in the School of Computer Science’s Gates Center for Computer Science.

And it won’t be staffed exclusively by men in shirts and ties. Women will be an integral part of CMU’s version of mission control.

“Once our rovers land on the moon, every second counts,” said Lydia Schweitzer, a research assistant in the Robotics Institute and head of CMU mission operations.

Related:

• CMU lunar rover going to the moon

“Communication windows during missions are extremely limited. We need to make decisions quickly,” she said. “Moonshot Mission Control will be an ideal place for the crew to monitor and direct our rovers.”

Schweitzer said the university is still putting it all together. The mission control center will feature operator workstations where crew members can plan and direct the movements of the rovers, monitor their data and images, and communicate with them and each other.

To pay for and complete construction of mission control, the team has launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable it to purchase servers, computers and communications equipment capable of establishing and maintaining contact on the moon. The goal is to raise $80,000 for the project.

“Building and outfitting Moonshot Mission Control is critical to success,” said William “Red” Whitaker, University Founders Research Professor in the Robotics Institute. “The culmination of many years and countless hours of work by hundreds of individuals has brought us to a pivotal moment in the history of the university and space exploration.”