LASP's Space Technology Building contains the Mission Operations Center, designed specifically for mission ops activities. It includes

• Two spacecraft control rooms (the main one having a bank of 9 computers)
• Five science operation rooms
• A computer and communications center
• Special facilities for use by engineers and scientists during launches and other critical mission phases

LASP's Mission Ops Satellite Control Room

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Many special tasks must be performed in the LASP control center to carry out a space science mission:

• Planning and scheduling the sequence of activities to be performed by the spacecraft and its instruments.
• Converting the planned activity sequence into a string of command messages to be sent to the spacecraft and verifying that the commands won’t cause harm to the spacecraft or instruments.
• Calculating the position of the spacecraft for each moment in time an determining the precise orientation of the spacecraft and the pointing of its instruments.
• Setting up communication links between the spacecraft and control center through specialized satellite tracking facilities located around the world.
• Monitoring the health and status of the spacecraft and instruments during a communications session and sending command messages to the spacecraft.
• Gathering and organizing the data radioed back from the spacecraft.
• Processing and analyzing the data.
• Distributing data to the scientific community.
• Archiving the data—scientific data sets collected from space may be valuable to scientists for decades, so great care is taken to preserve them.