Inside Nasa's mission control: 'centre of the universe'

Propelling its way through space more than 120 million miles away is Curiosity, a one-tonne rover. As the probe makes its final approach to Mars, Amy Willis takes a rare look inside Nasa's mission control centre.

Nasa's mission control centre, JPL

Inside Nasa's mission control centre at JPL

Nasa's mission support centre at JPL

In my hand is a very important piece of plastic. It isn’t technical, nor is it scientific but its contents are crucial. I’m holding a jar full of peanuts – plain peanuts to be precise.

Emblazoned on the front in large red and white lettering is “CURIOSITY. Entry – Descent – Landing August 5, 2012. Dare mighty things”. It hasn’t been opened yet.

These are Nasa’s “good luck peanuts” reserved only for landing night. It would be sacrilege to crack them open early for a quick taste.

Legend has it that when the team didn’t eat peanuts during a landing in the 1960s, it resulted in failure. I edge my hand away from the 12-inch high jar very carefully and turn my attention to the rest of the room.

Mission control at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, feels a bit like being inside the Starship enterprise.

Lines of identical work stations run across the room, each row encapsulated in a smooth curved shelf. A neon blue glow gives the room a futuristic feel. The room even has its own timezone: Mars time, where each day lasts 24 hours and 40 minutes. To keep track of Mars time, Nasa has its own internal app. 

"It definitely is a challenge," one employee said. "One because you really need to know what your work schedule is and two because you are working in the middle of the night. But then it will come around and you'll be working in the day time.
"When people say they're working on Mars that is what they mean. You're in a totally different timezone, another world really."

In the middle of the room, I half expected to see a Naugahyde-covered rotating chair for the flight director. But Nasa’s mission control has a small 5ft by 5ft space where the flight director stands to coordinate the team.

“We call this ‘the centre of the universe’,” James McClure, a flight operations engineer, tells us.

The name is understandable. From this tiny carpeted area dozens of spaceships and orbiters receive commands including the Curiosity rover.

A multitude of large screens surround the room showing various antennas from around the world, transmitting and receiving information like one giant space switchboard. Not only that, but the control centre also acts as an exchange for commands from other Nasa departments dotted around the 177-acre JPL site.

Mission control has been manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since 1964. It has a backup battery in case of any local power blackouts, and 10 days of fuel are kept on site at all times to run emergency generators.

Tucked away from the main flight control centre, is a small clinical-looking room labelled “mission support”.

The close camera shots of Nasa engineers doing high-fives, cheering (and eating peanuts) will all be from this tiny area. This is where the mission's critical real-time ops personnel will be monitoring the descent – the first people to know whether the mission has triumphed.

This small team of personnel will have some idea of Curiosity’s progress throughout the entry due to a series of tones: one for the completion of each descent stage.

“When we land successfully, it is going to be really loud in this room,” David Oh, the lead flight director, tells me.

And during that "seven minutes of terror" will there be any cursing?

"Well probably," another scientist adds. "We are human after all."