Question: Do you have any communication issues with your team in Munich?

Simon Challis answered on 10 Dec 2015:

Hey Freznor!

Wow what a great question! Actually you have probably hit on one of the greatest challenges that we have in Human Space Flight in ESA and probably all over the world.

First it can sometimes be a challenge with the crew since we cannot talk to them any time we want but with direct voice communication, emails, messages and videoconferences we manage this pretty well.

The other challenge is operations within Europe. We work on a distributed set up with the main control centre is here in Munich but with the science centres spread over different countries: Belgium, Spain, Germany, France, Norway and Denmark. Plus our engineering teams are in Bremen, Germany and Turin, Italy. Keeping all these different teams on the same page is a great challenge as you might imagine not only for normal operations but especially for when we have a problem that we need to solve!

So we spend alot of our working week writing email, talking on the phone, giving presentations etc and not only at consoles in the control room.

The great thing is most people are really motivated in their jobs so this helps alot to bridge the cultural and language barriers… its important to have a lot of respect for each other! But you also need a lot of patience!