Past opportunities 2017
Post-Alpbach School Summer School event 2017
Status: Call for the applications closed on 8 September 2017; only opened to students who participated in the Alpbach Summer School 2017. Event delivered.
Date: 20-24 November 2017
Description: Students got the opportunity to carry on working on the PAHST (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Space Telescope) project proposed by the team Blue during the Alpbach Summer School 2017. The objective of this event was to prepare a scientific paper to be presented at an international conference or published in a scientific journal. Students were supported by ESA and external experts, and had the opportunity to use the ESA Academy's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF).
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Guidelines for the event PAHST presentation Preparation for CDF session First CDF session |
| Day 2 |
Mission redefinition Second CDF session |
| Day 3 |
Third CDF sessions ESEC visit |
| Day 4 |
Conclusion of CDF sessions Preparation of oral presentation Delivery of preliminary oral presentation Visit of the Bouillon Castle |
| Day 5 |
Finalisation of oral presentation Final oral presentation Discussion about the article |
Rosetta Science Operations Scheduling Legacy Workshop 2017
Status: Call for the applications closed. Workshop delivered.
Date: 3-6 October 2017
Description: During this workshop university students learned how science operations scheduling is done at ESA and what tools are used. Exercises were performed with the support of the experts who did the scheduling for the real mission using the actual science operations scheduling software (MAPPS) that produced the final experiment commanding for the spacecraft. These exercises were supported by lectures given by various members of the Rosetta team including the project scientist, spacecraft operations manager, ESA Philae system engineer and individuals who were involved in building the actual spacecraft. In addition, the students learned how to access the science data that the science operations schedules produced via the Planetary Science Archive.
Watch the training session video.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Rosetta mission overview Rosetta Spacecraft design Rosetta AIV experience and considerations MAPPS introduction and overview MAPPS overview presentation Group exercise |
| Day 2 |
Rosetta Science Ground Segment Rosetta Instrument teams Science Operation Planning - Long Term Planning Science Operations Planning - Medium and Short Term Planning Tour of ESEC Rosetta Mission Operations Science Pointing timeline Group exercise |
| Day 3 |
Philae Lander Instrument timelines Rosetta image archive Group exercise |
| Day 4 |
End of Mission operations Philae Search Finalise group exercise Present results to experts ESA Education opportunities |
Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Operations training course 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 19 - 22 September 2017
Description: Students learned about:
- the challenges of operating a spacecraft (as opposed to designing a spacecraft)
- the operator’s view on all the spacecraft subsystems and the design features to implement in order to operate them
- ‘physiological’ traps to be avoided during operations and testing
Taught by an ESA expert from the Advanced Operations Concepts Office of ESA’ European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany, the course was delivered through formal lectures without excessive mathematics or technical jargon, but with a heavy emphasis placed on the interaction with the students.
Schedule:
| Day 1 & 2 |
Introduction - the difference between design and operations engineers Mission design and payloads Attitude Dynamic and Control Subsystems Orbit Control System Power |
| Day 3 & 4 |
Power (Storage) Thermal Telemetry-Tracking and Control Subsystems Command and Control On-board processors On-board software and Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery Group Exercise and Summary |
Concurrent Engineering Challenge 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Challenge delivered.
Date: 11-15 September 2017
Description: The ESA Academy Concurrent Engineering Challenge featured groups of 15 to 25 students, each one supervised by two system engineers in the four Concurrent Design Facilities (CDFs) in Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom), Technical University of Madrid (Spain) and the ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre (Belgium). Groups were given a specific mission to design in four days.
Students in each group were divided into small teams of two or three to cover the following disciplines: structures, configuration, power, mechanisms, thermal, attitude and orbit control system for a satellite (AOCS), propulsion, optics / sensors, trajectory analysis, and communications / data handling. Students within each small team created a subsystem concept in order to achieve the mission parameters using the Concurrent Engineering approach.
The groups did not compete against each other. Instead, they used video conferencing to share each day’s progress, raise any particular difficulties they were facing, and receive helpful input from the other participants. At the end of the week, each group presented their final design.
Ultimately, students involved in the challenge learned about the Concurrent Engineering approach and its benefits, and how to use the Open Concurrent Design Tool (OCDT).
Schedule for the group in ESA Academy's Training and Learning Centre:
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Introduction Concurrent Engineering Approach Get familiar with Workbooks and OCDT Visit of ESA Redu Centre |
| Day 2 |
Each group presentation general presentation Introduction to the mission Mission overview and requirements System requirements Mission and system modes definition Each group results presentation |
| Day 3 |
First iteration of all subsystems First budgets Each group first results presentation |
| Day 4 |
Finalisation of the concept Product tree Budgets Each group second iteration presentation |
| Day 5 |
Final design consolidation & any open issues Each group final presentation |
ESA-ELGRA Gravity-Related Research Summer School 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Summer School delivered.
Date: 26 - 30 June 2017
Description: During these four and a half days summer school, students will be introduced to gravity-related research by ELGRA and ESA experts from across Europe.
Through-out stimulating lectures about the current research under microgravity and hypergravity conditions in Life and Physical sciences, students will appreciate the benefits of performing research at different g levels.
Moreover, the students will work within small groups to come up with potential ideas for future gravity-related experiment student projects, also with the benefit of the existing ESA Educational platforms such as the parabolic flights, the human centrifuge or the ISS.
Schedule::
| Day 1 |
Introduction to ESA, ESA programmes and opportunities Introduction to ELGRA and SELGRA Introduction to gravity-related research ESA Education Office and hands-on programmes Develop a gravity-related experiment Introduction to team project Visit of ESA Redu Centre and Euro Space Centre |
| Day 2 |
Life science research part 1 Physiology research part Physical science research part Project Management workshop Former students projects Team project |
| Day 3 |
Life science research part 2 Physiology research part 2 Physical science research part 2 Team project Visit of Centre Spatial de Liège |
| Day 4 |
Life science research part 3 Physiology research part 3 Physical science research part 3 Space project life cycle Team project |
| Day 5 | Team project presentations |
Product Assurance and Safety Training Course 2017
Status: Call for Applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 12 - 15 June 2017
Description: During this four days training course, students will be given an understanding of the PA&S engineer role in order to increase their awareness and the interest on PA&S and present them the different related disciplines.
Though-out face-to-face lectures from several ESA’s PA&S managers and PA&S discipline experts, students will understand that PA&S is an integral part of the engineering activities playing a role in the development, design, test philosophy, build and operation of the system.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Overall Context of Space Projects Setting the Scene |
| Day 2 |
Overview of Product Assurance in Space Business PA Disciplines: Dependability & Safety |
| Day 3 |
PA Disciplines: Software Product Assurance PA Disciplines: Electrical, Electronic and Electro-mechanical components |
| Day 4 |
PA Disciplines: Materials & Processes PA Disciplines: Quality Management & Assurance |
Standardisation Training Course 2017
Status: Call for Applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 6 - 9 June 2017
Description: During this four days training course, students will be given an introduction to ECSS system and will be taught the importance of using standards. They will be also provided with an overview of how/why standards are used in different disciplines at ESA.
Though-out face-to-face lectures from several experts, students will appreciate the importance of ECSS system, which will be an important part of their space-related career, complementing what they normally learn at university.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Introduction to ECSS System Management Mechanisms |
| Day 2 |
PA&QA System Engineering Control Engineering |
| Day 3 |
Thermal Structural Ground System and Operations |
| Day 4 |
Electrical & Electronics Telecommunication |
Introduction to Space Law Training Course 2017
Status: Call for Applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 29 May – 2 June 2017
Description: The aim of this five days training course, students will be provided with an introductory overview of space law, why it is necessary today to regulate space activities and how it applies practically to space missions, from the smallest of projects like a university’s CubeSat project, the most famous feats of space endeavours like human spaceflight and the International Space Station right through to forward-looking questions like planetary defence.
By the end of this programme, students will appreciate the importance of law in the realisation of a space mission and they will have an overview of the international legal frameworks which governs the space activity today.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Space Law at a Glance Basic Introduction to the Core Principles and Concepts of International Law Overview of Comparative Fields of International Law UN Space Treaties and other Legal Instruments – General Overview |
| Day 2 |
General Overview of National Space Law Anatomy of a National Space Law and Licensing Introduction to Institutions: European Space Agency, UNCOPUOS and UNOOSA, ITU, IADC, ECSS & ISO |
| Day 3 |
Legal Lifecycle (I): Contracting Practices Legal Lifecycle (II): Licensing, Mission Authorisation & Supervision Legal Lifecycle (III) Technology Transfer & Export Control Legal Lifecycle (IV): Insurance, Launch & Early Orbit Phase Spectrum Management & Frequency Allocation Exercise: From CubeSats to Mega-Constellations Planetary Defence & Asteroid Mining Space Tourism & Suborbital Flights |
| Day 4 |
Legal Lifecycle (V): Operations & In-Orbit Transfer of Ownership Legal Lifecycle (VI): On-Orbit Servicing Legal Lifecycle (VII): Operations in GEO Legal Lifecycle (VIII): End-of-Life and Re-entry SDM Guidelines in Practice Sustainability of Space Activities Navigation Remote Sensing and Disaster Management |
| Day 5 |
Security of Space Assets Safety of Space Operations Mini-project |
Concurrent Engineering Workshop - May 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Workshop delivered.
Date: 09-12 May 2017
Description: Concurrent engineering is a method of designing and developing products in the space sector where all subsystems are designed simultaneously making the process more efficient.
During these 4 days workshops, students will learn about concurrent engineering and its benefits, taking advantage of the use of the ESA Academy’s Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) . Guided by ESA experts, the students will first learn to use the Open Concurrent Design Tool (OCDT) and identify design drivers. They will be then divided into groups of 2 or 3 to cover the several subsystems and, together with their groups, they will create a subsystem concept in order to later achieve an already identified mission concept using concurrent engineering.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Introduction to the Mission and Concurrent Engineering Get familiar with Workbooks and OCDT Mission overview and Trade-Off Mission and System Modes Definition |
| Day 2 |
First iteration of all Subsystems. Modify Workbooks First Budgets Presentations of the first results ESA Redu Centre Visit |
| Day 3 |
Finalisation of the Concept Product tree Budgets Presentation of the second iteration |
| Day 4 |
Final Design Consolidation & any Open Issues Preparing the Final Presentation Final Presentations |
Concurrent Engineering Workshop March 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Workshop delivered
Date: 14-17 March 2017
Description: Concurrent engineering is a method of designing and developing products in the space sector where all subsystems are designed simultaneously making the process more efficient.
During these 4 days workshops, students learnt about concurrent engineering and its benefits, taking advantage of the use of the ESA Academy’s Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) . Guided by ESA experts, the students first learnt to use the Open Concurrent Design Tool (OCDT) and identified design drivers. They were then divided into groups of 2 or 3 to cover the several subsystems and, together with their groups, they created a subsystem concept in order to later achieve an already identified mission concept using concurrent engineering.More details.
Schedule::
| Day 1 |
Introduction to the Mission and Concurrent Engineering Get familiar with Workbooks and OCDT Mission overview and Trade-Off Mission and System Modes Definition |
| Day 2 |
First iteration of all Subsystems. Modify Workbooks First Budgets Presentations of the first results |
| Day 3 |
Finalisation of the Concept Product tree Budgets Presentation of the second iteration |
| Day 4 |
Final Design Consolidation & any Open Issues Preparing the Final Presentation Final Presentations ESA Redu Centre Visit |
Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Communications Training Course 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 14-17 February 2017
Description: Students learnt about:
- the challenges of communicating with a spacecraft
- an operator’s view on all the spacecraft subsystems both on-board and on the ground
- ‘physiological’ traps to be avoided during operations and testing
Taught by an ESA expert from the Advanced Operations Concepts Office of ESA’ European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Darmstadt, Germany, the course was delivered through formal lectures without excessive mathematics or technical jargon, but with a heavy emphasis placed on the interaction with the students.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Introduction The Challenge Modulation |
| Day 2 |
Demodulation Coding Decoding Visit of an antenna and baseband equipment |
| Day 3 |
Protocols Visit of the PROBA operation room Radio Frequency transmissions/reception Link Budgets |
| Day 4 |
Real Ground Stations Visit of ESA Redu Centre Exercise |
Human Space Physiology Training Course 2017
Status: Call for applications closed. Training course delivered.
Date: 30 January - 2 February 2017
Description: Throughout face-to-face and videoconference lectures, two groups of university students took part in this training course from two different locations: the ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre in Redu, Belgium and the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany. Students were introduced to the human physiological effects of spaceflight and to the approaches to mitigate the effects of microgravity on the human body with the use of analogues and models of the space environment. They also were involved in a group project in order to increase their knowledge about a key physiological issue in Human Spaceflight.
The students can expect to be introduced to the following topics:
- What it’s really like to live in space
- The challenges, lessons, and successes that have led to permanent occupation of the International Space Station, and the conditions it must provide to protect and support life
- Human Space Physiology research is performed both in space and on Earth
- How the senses perceive being ‘weightless’ in an orbiting space vehicle
- How key physiological systems respond to microgravity, what mechanisms underlie these changes, and some approaches that may be used to mitigate such effects
- Major issues and challenges facing current human spaceflight and future space exploration.
Gravity-Related Experiments training week 2017
Status: Training week delivered.
Date: 16-19 January 2017
Description: The aim of this training week was to better prepare selected student teams for their participation in the ESA Academy Hands-on Space Projects’ Fly Your Thesis!, Drop Your Thesis! and Spin Your Thesis! Programmes. By providing them with the information and basic knowledge that is required to design, develop, test, and perform a gravity-related scientific experiment or technology demonstration students were helped to achieve their objectives. The idea was to optimize the transfer of know-how and expertise from the experts in the field to the students, before their experiment campaigns, through lectures, workshops and meetings with the experts. Hence, the objective was to increase the quality of collected data and the success rate of the students’ hands-on projects.
Schedule:
| Day 1 |
Introduction to ESA, ESA programmes and opportunities Student teams presentations Outreach workshop Physical sciences at different g levels |
| Day 2 |
Project and Risk Management workshop Former student projects Meet your experts (session 1) |
| Day 3 |
Meet your experts (session 2) Visit of Redu Centre Life sciences at different g levels |
| Day 4 |
Experiment Automation workshop SELGRA Human physiology at different g levels System Engineering Inspirational Lecture Euro Space Centre visit |