but it was discarded due to its accelerated urban development, which would have been, without a doubt, a safe source of interference. Another argument in favor of Cebreros was to have the facilities that NASA used in the 1960s and 1970s to monitor the Apollo spacecraft. NASA abandoned the use of this station in 1983 for budgetary reasons and ceded the facilities to the Spanish government. Construction The search for the site for the Cebreros station began in April 2002, although construction did not start until January 2003. It lasted a little over two years (it ended in August 2005, and since then it has been running on tests) .The construction was the responsibility of a consortium led by the companies SED Systems (Canada) and by Vertex Antennentechnik (Germany). The Spanish companies ESTEYCO and NECSO were responsible for the infrastructure of the antenna tower, while LV Salamanca was responsible for the infrastructure and the remodeling of the building. The cost of Cebreros station has been about 30 million euros, of which 22 have been for the antenna. The first director was Spanish Valeriano Claros. Missions It covered interplanetary missions, such as the Rosetta space probe, sent into space in 2004 to land for the first time on a comet, the Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after a ten-year star voyage, and the routine operations of the Venus Express mission, and is used currently as support for the Mars Express. The station participates in missions as BepiColombo, Herschel, Planck, LISA Pathfinder and Gaia space telescopes. References External links ESA webpage on ESTRACK, including links to all stations ESA/ESTRACK Cebreros station page Cebreros Station live webcam European Space Agency ESTRACK facilities Earth stations in Spain Buildings and structures in the Community of Madrid INTA facilities 2005 establishments in Spain Buildings and structures completed in 2005