Concurrent Engineering Challenge 2025 Applications Open to Universities

Concurrent Engineering (CE) is a systematic approach to integrated product development that focuses on meeting customer expectations. It promotes values like collaboration, trust, and open communication, ensuring that decisions are made by consensus, with input from all disciplines involved throughout the entire product life cycle.

With respect to traditional design methods, the Concurrent Engineering approach uses a dedicated process and facility, a multidisciplinary team, and an integrated design model so that all subsystems can perform the design in the same room, at the same time. This is a far more efficient way of designing but comes with its own difficulties. A consistent set of design parameters are defined and exchanged throughout the process and any changes that could impact the design on another discipline are identified, communicated, and assessed with the entire team. Although Concurrent Engineering is a more complicated process to begin with, in effect it allows for design challenges to be identified earlier, therefore reducing the overall design time and cost. 

ESA’s main Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) is located at ESA’s Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. At ESA Academy's Training and Learning Facility located at the ESA Education Training Centre (ESEC-Galaxia) in Belgium, ESA has developed a similar facility exclusively for educational purposes.

Details of the Challenge

The ESA Academy’s Concurrent Engineering Challenge 2025 will feature four groups of 20-30 University students at Master or PhD level. One group will be selected, in a separate call, by ESA to participate in the Challenge from ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Facility. The three other groups will be identified by the universities who have been successful in this application process and will participate from their respective Concurrent Engineering Facilities (CEFs). 

Each group shall be supervised by two local systems engineers and will be given, at the start of the Challenge, the same space mission to design within five days. Students in each group will be divided into small teams of two or three to cover the following disciplines:  

• Mechanisms and Structures
• Configuration  
• Power 
• Thermal 
• AOCS 
• Propulsion  
• Trajectory analysis  
• Communications and Data Handling  
• Optical Payload
• Cost Engineering

The 2025 Challenge will also integrate Cost Engineering, requiring students to estimate and manage the costs of their subsystems and overall mission, balancing technical and financial constraints. This hands-on experience in budgeting will help participants make right trade-off design decisions.

Students within each small team will design their subsystem using the Concurrent Engineering approach with the objective of complying with the mission requirements and prove feasibility.  

The groups will not compete against each other but will rather use video conferencing and live messaging forums to share each day’s progress, raise any particular challenges they are facing, and receive feedback from the other participants. At the end of the week, each group will present their final design to the others.

Preliminary schedule of the Challenge:

Universities involved in the Challenge will benefit from the advice of ESA to develop their CEF and to learn how to organise a Concurrent Engineering study with University students. They will also be offered several tutorials to learn about the Concurrent Engineering approach and its benefits, as well as the Concurrent Model-based Engineering Tool (COMET). Several preparation meetings will be organised by video conference between ESA and the participating universities. 

Certificates of participation will be sent to each university to be distributed to the participants. The certificates will have the logo and signature of each participating university and ESA. 

How to apply

In order to participate, universities should fill in the application form and must fulfil the following criteria:  

• Be located in an ESA Member State; 
• Have a CEF facility or commit to develop one for the Challenge;  
• Have or commit to have a network of more than 15 dedicated computers in this facility;  
• Have or commit to have capabilities for video conferencing (large screens, microphone(s), cameras, loudspeakers,) in this facility; 
• Use COMET or commit to install the tool and learn how to use it before the Challenge;  
• Have a professor appointed to coordinate the preparation and organisation of the Challenge at the University; 
• Have two academics with some design knowledge and familiarity in space systems to be appointed as systems engineers for the Challenge. They should be willing to learn the Concurrent Engineering approach and COMET, and be available for the entire duration of the Challenge, as well as to participate in the preparation meetings;  
• Have technician(s) to support the use of COMET, live forums and video conferencing system during the Challenge; 
• Identify a potential group of 20-30 participating MSc or PhD students in the University; 
• Have support material to assist students during the design sessions such as books and specific domain software (for example CAD or trajectory analysis software); 
• Commit to collaborate with ESA and the other participating universities during the preparation and organisation of the Challenge, to attend the meetings and to meet the milestones; 
• 2-3 months before the Challenge: the CEF should be ready and operational;
• 1-2 months before the Challenge: the COMET and related calculation sheets should be installed, and the two systems engineers should be familiar with the material and the Concurrent Engineering approach;
• 1 month before the Challenge: students should be identified and information about participants should be provided to ESA. 

The deadline for applications is 4 November 2024, 23:59 CET.  The selection announcement is on 18 November 2024. 

For more information, please contact academy.training@esa.int.