The Centre

Background

Throughout all phases of the payload's life-cycle, the EMCS serves a multi-user community that needs to be supported from a harmonised ground infrastructure. A decentralised approach has been selected by ESA, based on existing and nationally funded User Support and Operations Centres (USOCs) under the overall management of ESA. The overall responsibility of the EMCS throughout the entire payload's operational phases: i.e. pre-flight activities, in-flight operations and post-flight activities relies on the Norwegian User Support and Operations Centre (N-USOC).

The N-USOC Control Room

For experiment operations, N-USOC will provide users with a communication and data processing infrastructure that allows real-time data monitoring and control. Users may come from either a university or industry teams and perform an experiment in the EMCS, thereby utilizing the ground infrastructure provided by N-USOC. The users work either at the N-USOC site in Norway or from their Users Home Base (UHB), in the last instance using an Internet connection to the N-USOC. The users thereby have the possibility of real-time monitoring and control of their experiment.

To operate the EMCS facility and the experiments therein, the N-USOC is supported by the EMCS' Payload Developer (PD), which provides experiment support from their industry site (Friedrichshafen, Germany) or on the N-USOC site when required.

The Plant Biocentre

N-USOC is located at the the Plant Biocentre (PBS), a branch of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Natural Science and Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). PBS is located at one of the two major university campuses, Dragvoll. The centre was established at NTNU in 1995, and the director has since then been Professor Tor-Henning Iversen. He has both the administrative and scientific responsibility for a group of 25-30 graduate and PhD students, scientific and technical staff members.

Activities at the centre are applied science within areas of agricultural research. The centre also have extensive experience with space related biology and has since 1989 performed 6 experiments on the space shuttle. The centre has also participated in, and co-ordinated an EU-project (5 FP) within molecular biology / gene technology.

The education of MSc and PhD students within the areas of molecular biology, cell biology and plant physiology are also main goals of the centre.

The centre comprises laboratories (450 m²), a climatized greenhouse with controlled test rooms (1000 m²), 40.000m² of field cultivation area and in 2003 a new GMP greenhouse was established at the centre. The centre is equipped with modern laboratory facilities and has separate divisions for sterile cultivation of plant and animal cell cultures, chemical analysis, work in gene technology, cell biology and plant physiology, growing rooms for tissue cultures, isotope-laboratory, light and scanning electron microscopy and morphometrical analysis. The centre also has a small workshop that specialises in developing prototypes for space biology activities. Trough the Department of Biology and co-operation with Department of Physics, NTNU, the centre has access to transmission electron microscope, confocal laser microscope and a large modern workshop.

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