On November 19 and after the commissioning of ESA's CryoSat-2 complete, the mission has been officially transferred to the operations team. This milestone marks the beginning of the satellite’s operational life delivering ice-thickness data to understand the impact of climate change on the polar environment.

Launched in April, the mission has recently completed commissioning – an important phase that ensures the satellite, instruments, data retrieval and data processing procedures are in optimal working order. Now that this period is over, the mission has entered its exploitation phase and will start delivering vital data on ice thickness to the scientific community. The satellite will continue to be monitored, operated and controlled by the Flight Operations Segment at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

Together with GOCE and SMOS, both launched in 2009, CryoSat-2 forms part of the earth observation satellite series called Earth Explorers. These satellites have been designed by ESA to address areas of concern identified by experts working in the earth-sciences field, each satellite centering its research on different aspects of the earth system.

In Spain GMV took charge initially of part of the mission analysis activities. Subsequently, in a project for ESA’s Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Germany, GMV led the design, development and maintenance of the mission control system. To ensure correct system operation a four-person GMV team gave direct backup in ESA’s Operations Centre. GMV engineers will also participate in the orbital dynamics operations to ensure that the orbit of CryoSat-2 is correct at all times.