.TITLE Goddard Space Flight Center .SYNONYM goddard ground controllers Goddard Space Flight Center/STOCC .DESCRIPTION NASA center in Greenbelt, MD which will operate the Hubble Space Telescope once it is in orbit. .CONTENTS .para Once the Space Shuttle carries the .~ Hubble Space Telescope~ into orbit, project personnel at Goddard will operate the satellite through the Space Telescope Operations Control Center (STOCC), located at Goddard. .para The STOCC is the largest and most complex control center for a scientific satellite to date, and will enable astronomers to utlilize the .~ Hubble Space Telescope~ much like a ground observatory. The astronomers typically will work at the .~ Space Telescope Science~ Institute in Baltimore. They will send their observing requests to the STOCC where the Hubble Space Telescope's controllers will program the observations. The data and images obtained by the Telescope's instruments then will be transmitted to the STOCC and on to the .~ Space Telescope Science Institute~, where astronomers will study the information and present their findings to the world community. .para It is expected that the STOCC will operate 24 hours per day and provide a schedule of 3,500 hours of observing time annually. By comparison, ground observatories, which can operate only during the night, offer just 2000 hours of observing time per year.