We have all seen the spectacular site when the space shuttle takes off.

Have your ever thought about the command and control infra structure that must be in place at NASA to pull off such feats?

This is where mission critical conferencing plays an important part.

Typically, different groups of engineers need to communicate with each other on different conferences. For example, a group may be discussing ‘fuel utilization’ and another group ‘propulsion parameters’ etc.

There are several supervisors who also need to keep track of their sub ordinates and speak to their peers at moment’s notice. Some of these conversations may be point to point or on a conference call.

The mission director needs to be able to listen into multiple conversations that may be going on in different conference rooms.

Based on what the mission controller hears, he/she may have to barge in and have full duplex conversation with people in a given conference room.

All conferences taking place need to be recorded for future reference.

The satellite launches are typically monitored from different locations around the world. The people in these locations need to be able to talk to each other in ‘always on’ conference calls.

These multiple conference calls need to occur in a secure environment.

The conference bridge equipment should be able to display real time call activity, including display of loudest speaker etc.

A number of in conference call controls e.g., mute/ un-mute, lock/unlock etc should be available and easily usable to keep the conference calling experience user friendly.

All of the capabilities described above should be accessible from a command and control web portal.

Together this entire arrangement is called Mission Critical Audio Conferencing.