Microgravity User Support Centre
The Microgravity User Support Centre (MUSC) is located at the DLR German Aerospace Centre. This USOC supports the preparation, operation and evaluation of space experiments in the fields of life and material sciences.
The centre has been performing payload operations since the D-1 Spacelab Mission in 1985 and is the result of a cooperative effort of the Institutes of Space Simulation and the Institute of Aerospace Medicine at DLR.
MUSC provides certification of flight readiness, operational support for inflight activities and data acquisition and archiving system for the experimental data.
Apart from the role that MUSC plays as USOC for the ISS, it is also the Lander Control Center for the Heat and Physical Properties Package (HP³) tasks of the Mars Mission InSight.
It is also in charge of preparations for the Phobos Mission Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), set for launch in 2024.
MUSC is the facility responsible centre for the Biolab rack, the Material Science Lab (MSL) inside the NASA Materials Science Research Rack (MSRR), the European Drawer Rack (EDR), the Electromagnetic Levitator (EML) facility, the radiation sensors Dosis and the Exobiology facility on Bartolomeo.
Examples of facilities operated by MUSC are the Biolab rack is a facility designed to support life sciences experiments with the aim to identify the role of microgravity in organisms, and Dosis 3D – radiation detectors which record the radiation levels inside the International Space Station.