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ESA Council Members visit the Concurrent Design Facility
Several ministers and their deputies took the opportunity, during the recent two day ESA Council Meeting in the Hague, to visit ESTEC and be shown round some of its remarkable facilities.
These visits of course included the Concurrent Design Facility (CDF), where visitors were lucky enough to see an active CDF session from the observation gallery in the B room. Massimo Bandecchi, CDF Manager, briefed the visitors on the role of the CDF and Concurrent Engineering in ESA, illustrating the principles on which it is based and explaining the benefits for ESA and the Space Community at large.
The design work in progress in the CDF on Sentinel 5 Precursor mission assessment and on Small Geo (a telecommunications satellite platform), carried out in collaboration with Industry, gave the opportunity to present two of the main ESA programmes: GMES and Telecomm.
Josef Aschbacher (Head of ESA GMES Space Office) presented the aims and services of the Global Monitoring Environment and Security programme including the main features of the 5 Sentinel missions, currently being developed by European Industry.
Jose Casas (Deputy Head of the Telecommunications Department) explained the industrial and commercial importance of the Telecomm programme in the European scenario and outlined the long term plan submitted to the Ministerial Council.
In both cases the speakers emphasised the support provided by the CDF to their respective programmes.