Mission Control

This image depicts Mission Control about ten minutes after the liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery on Dec 9, 2006. Mission Control is located in Building 30 of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. Mission Control is reponsible for all human spaceflight for the United States. There are two Flight Control Rooms (FCRs, pronounced "ficker"). The Blue Flight Control Room (BFCR) directs the International Space Station, while the White Flight Control Room (WFCR) controls the Space Shuttle. The images on this page depict the Shuttle Flight Control Room (WFCR).

Each human space mission has an insignia plaque. Traditionally, the current mission's plaque hangs next to the Ground Control position, near the main door. Once the mission is complete, the plaque is mounted to its permanent home on the opposite wall. The STS-116 insignia is depicted here, since it was in space when I was working on this project. To the left of the door are three plaques from American missions that resulted in the loss of life. The Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-51L) was lost in 1986 shortly after liftoff. The Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-107) was lost during reentry in 2002. The Apollo I mission (retroactively named) was lost during a training exercise. The Mission Operations Directorate plaque is posted on top. Also visible in this image is one of the cameras that is used to film the Flight Control team (for NASA TV).

A view from the front camera. The last row lies empty since they are not visible in the final image. They are (from left to right in this view) the flight surgeon, the booster officer, the mission operations directorate, and the public affairs officer (PAO). The PAO is often heard on NASA TV providing commentary of the coverage. Behind the last row is a viewing gallery for the media (and the public?).

There are about twenty consoles, each having a unique call sign which describes that position's responsibility. The front row of Mission Control is affectionately known as "the trench." During liftoff, the Flight Dynamics Officer (FDO) monitors the shuttle performance, flight path and assesses abort modes. An ascent/entry expert monitors guidance, navigation and crew execution of ascent commands. In this image, we see the flight controllers monitoring the shuttle ascent. The launch digitals screen shows measurements from the Primary Avionics Software System (PASS), Backup Flight System (BFS) and Ground (GND). The Mission Elapsed Time (MET) shows that we are about ten minutes after liftoff. On the side wall, you can see the mission insignia for previous shuttle missions. The human models in this scene have only the most basic of textures since they were in the distance for the original image. Desk clutter is also missing because it was hidden behind other objects. The ground controller maintains and directs activities related to the Mission Control hardware and software and coordinates vehicle tracking activities.

The Flight Director is the leader of the flight control team and is responsible for the overall mission success and safety. Next to the Flight Director sits the CAPCOM. The name CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) is a hold over from when manned spacecraft were called capsules. The CAPCOM is (always?) an astronaut who serves as the single point of contact with the crew. The people depicted in these images are purely imaginary. There is no intention to portray actual NASA employees or contractors. Any similarity to any real person is entirely unintentional and purely coincidental.

It took about 45 days to complete this project. To the right is the "end-of-day render" from each day I worked on it. I started out with the computer console and then migrated out to the room architecture. I experimented with the camera location somewhat too. I often start "zoomed out" and then find an interesting detail to focus in on. Near the end, the render was taking several hours, so some of the longer to render elements were sometimes taken out. In addition, not all the source changes result in visible changes (e.g., code cleanup, rewriting objects as macros, etc.) The inspiration image for this project can be found here.	Evolution of this project

Space Shuttle Discovery was in orbit during part of this project. In the evenings, I would watch NASA TV, which often broadcast live views of the very room I was rendering. Here is a screen shot of three Mission Control Centers: One from NASA TV (live), one in the process of being rendered, and a third as my Windows wallpaper.

At the back of the room, a flight surgeon is available for crew consultations over a privatized communications link. This image shows some of the details in the computer displays, keyboard and text.

Early on, I realized that I could use a lot of images cut and pasted from various space agency websites and photos. I could even copy a number of computer screenshots from the high res WFCR photos. About half way through, I challenged myself to make as many image maps as possible with POV-Ray. I managed to create 80 images: 3 flags (Canada, US, Chile), 9 space agency logos, 2 sheets from the Space Shuttle Operational Flight Rules Manual, the Earthrise print, 8 detailed computer screens, 57 randomly generated computer screens These images were all generated with POV-Ray (using CSG and text). An orthographic projection and a clock-based case statement allowed me to rapidly regenerate them all. To see them all, click on the image to the right. Although I tried to make them as accurate as possible, the resolution of the final image didn't require every last detail.

POV-Ray Source Code for this project (minus the humans and the shuttle insignia on the walls) is here There are two steps to render the project: Render mcc_img.pov (see the file for the correct command-line parameters) to generate 80 image_maps (mostly computer screens). Render rf_mcc.pov

More Information about Mission Control can be found at: KSC Science (NASA) Wikipedia's entry on Mission Control and Flight Controller During Shuttle Flights NASA TV often broadcasts from Mission Control.

Scene Statistics Finite objects: 20301 Infinite objects: 2 Light sources: 73 Total: 20376 Render Statistics Image Resolution 1024 x 768 Pixels: 798065 Samples: 2784841 Smpls/Pxl: 3.49 Rays: 62189851 Saved: 2573407 Max Level: 20/20 Ray->Shape Intersection Tests Succeeded Percentage Bicubic Patch 9778747 2291175 23.43 Box 3746172346 1951247080 52.09 Cone/Cylinder 4933095661 1033963069 20.96 CSG Intersection 1105013088 284947084 25.79 CSG Merge 629969433 205641197 32.64 CSG Union 685027336 140790082 20.55 Mesh 2111490953 1451863299 68.76 Plane 5596680198 3654434915 65.30 Prism 209205598 84216449 40.26 Prism Bound 759533746 641110644 84.41 Sphere 2481959028 131632495 5.30 Sphere Sweep 40939743 1732161 4.23 Superellipsoid 220511670 97191809 44.08 Torus 5911948076 152386668 2.58 Torus Bound 5911948076 174512975 2.95 True Type Font 1865981622 6529787 0.35 Bounding Object 153555135 69512456 45.27 Clipping Object 163315635 135352027 82.88 Bounding Box 377808901855 120946353396 32.01 Light Buffer 7516761590 2561124851 34.07 Vista Buffer 162255037 104008388 64.10 Roots tested: 969566171 eliminated: 48346441 Calls to Noise: 18087182 Calls to DNoise: 3570371 Media Intervals: 83434 Media Samples: 612914 (7.35) Shadow Ray Tests: 4388381773 Succeeded: 3088536138 Reflected Rays: 8185004 Transmitted Rays: 15468756 Radiosity samples calculated: 550250 (1.31 %) Radiosity samples reused: 41505089 Smallest Alloc: 34 bytes Largest Alloc: 48000032 bytes Total Scene Processing Times Parse Time: 0 hours 2 minutes 3 seconds (123 seconds) Photon Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 0 seconds (0 seconds) Render Time: 13 hours 1 minutes 0 seconds (46860 seconds) Total Time: 13 hours 3 minutes 3 seconds (46983 seconds) CPU time used: kernel 15.45 seconds, user 46291.84 seconds, total 46307.30 seconds Render averaged 16.98 PPS over 786432 pixels POV-Ray finished