Biotechnology Space Support Centre
The Biotechnology Space Support Centre (BIOTESC) is the USOC in Europe that supports ESA biological experiments. The Swiss centre is responsible for the Kubik facility and Education Payload Operations activities.
The involvement of BIOTESC in ESA experiments encompasses many phases. BIOTESC is involved in critical design reviews to understand the requirements and the support each experiment needs to be operated in space.
BIOTESC also supports testing to make sure the experiments can operate in space. Among other tasks, BIOTESC prepares the procedures of the experiments and follows them from their control room.
To ensure the well functioning of operations, BIOTESC is in communication with the Columbus Control Centre through voice loops.
The team at BIOTESC is composed of biologists, engineers, physicists and IT specialists. While working on several experiments at the same time, the interdisciplinary environment at BIOTESC facilitates the successful development of experiments.
One example of the experiments operated by BIOTESC is CIMON, an artificial intelligence robot to assist the crew onboard the International Space Station, or Astro Pi, an educational challenge that reaches thousands of students every year.