Bruno Belon leads the French Calipso team and is responsible for the French contribution to the project, which comprises the satellite, the Infra-Red Imaging Radiometer, the ground Control System and the in-orbit control of the satellite.

Bruno Belon has been working at CNES, the French space agency, for 30 years. He spent 15 years working in mathematics for space orbital flight dynamics, specifically on the Ariane launcher mechanical modelling. After leaving that job, he was involved in different projects like the Hermes space shuttle as mission analysis manager in the flight dynamics operations for geostationary satellites. Belon then became the systems engineer of the first Proteus platform project team. Most recently, before joining Calipso as CNES project manager in 1999, Belon led pathfinder system studies of the Galileo navigation system.

Image left: Shown here is Bruno Belon, the CNES project manager for CALIPSO.

What attracted you to the Calipso Mission?

Two aspects come to my mind: first, this mission will contribute to a better knowledge of the future of the climate, and I hope that this better knowledge will help us to anticipate appropriate decisions to manage the life conditions of people on the planet in the next decades; and, Calipso is an international project, with an integrated US-French team. This is a great human experience and chance to learn to work together, to make teams work together and compare and understand our respective working methods, but also our ways of life, our cultures.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

The team; and to succeed in solving problems year after year till a perfect in-orbit working of the satellite.