Mission Control Facility
Welcome to the Western Space Mission Control Facility
The Western Space Mission Control Facility is located in room 7110 in the Western Interdisciplinary Research Building. This facility will function as a hub for the Skylark, STRATOS, HiRISE, and CaSSIS teams, as well as other groups as the facility comes fully online. This secure setting is equipped with reconfigurable technology for multipurpose uses. It will provide a useful space for analogue missions, and remote imagery planning to support interdsciplinary space research objectives.
Facility Capabilities & Resources
The Western Space Mission Control Facility has been equipped with four 85-inch, high-definition screens, agile and reconfigurable meeting and planning spaces, 12 hot desk operation stations, as well as a functional break area and display area for Western Space memorabilia and a space literature library.
Interested in booking the space?
For inquires about usage and booking, please contact westernspace@uwo.ca
Mission Control showcases imagery representative of some of Western Space's core research intiatives around the facility. Please learn more about the story of each image used below:
Lunar Gateway Close-up
This image is an artists rendition of the NASA Gateway's Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module that would provide one of two habitation elements on the space station. The photograph was created by Alberto Bertolin and Bradley Reynolds, and you can learn more here. The image was edited to include the Frame 5014 image which is a view of the Moon taken during the Lunar Orbiter 5 mission in 1967. Learn more about the mission here.
NGC 602 (NIRDcam and MIRI Image)
This James Webb Space Telescope image released on October 23rd, 2023 is of the young star cluster NGC 602. It is located near a satellite galaxy ~200,000 light-years from Earth, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The environment local to the cluster is suggestive of on going star formation processes. Learn more about this image here.
NGC 6822 (MIRI Image)
This image of the irregular galaxy NGC 6822 was taken using the James Webb Space Telescope Mid-Infrared Instudment (MIRI) and released on July 31st, 2023. Dense regions of gas are visible in the infrared wavelength, with colors cyan indicating cooler patches, and orange indicating warmer dust. Brilliant blue gas in the image indicates the presence of light emitted by organic compounds. The irregular galaxy is host to star forming regions and supernovae remanants, the latter visible as a red ring below the center of the image. Learn more by following the link here.
