Gaia People

Alan Flowers

European Space Operations Centre

For the majority of his professional career Alan has worked as a Spacecraft Controller for the European Space Agency. He started working for ESA in 1985 as a Spacecraft Controller for EXOSAT, the predecessor of XMM-NEWTON. Later he joined the Launch and Early Orbit Phase team for the launches of the METEOSAT P2 & F3 satellites.

In 1989 Alan changed again to work as  Spacecraft Controller for the HIPPARCOS mission (Gaia's predecessor) for three years. Since then he has had the pleasure to work for other ESA Astronomy missions such as ISO, XMM-NEWTON and INTEGRAL.

Alan has been working as a part of the Gaia Flight Control Team since June 2013.

His personal interests include swimming, hiking and restoring classic motorcycles.

[Published: 09/01/2014]