Training Courses

The ESEO engineering activities performed by the university teams have been complemented by a series of additional learning opportunities offered by ESA during the execution of the project.

Lectures dedicated to the students participating in the ESEO project and involving ESA, SITAEL industry specialists, and the University of Bologna were organised. In particular, 3 editions of lecture courses and internships took place between September 2013 and September 2014 at the conference centre of the University of Bologna in Bertinoro. Each edition was composed of two weeks courses: one week with lectures related to space disciplines, and the second week concentrating on ESEO related subjects. These two initial training weeks were followed by a third one in the form of an internship at ALMASpace premises. University credits were recognised to all the participants, pending the successful result of a final exam conducted at the end of the internship. About 60 students from the network of ESEO university teams were selected to participate in these training opportunities.  In addition, 20 students external to the ESEO project were also offered the opportunity to participate in the ESEO lecture courses. Here you can read more details about these training courses. 

Students have also been involved in interface tests of their equipment with the ESEO spacecraft platform, at the System Integrator (SITAEL) premises and they were involved in the overall satellite integration and validation test campaign, for the parts relevant to their instrumentation.

Later, training Sessions at the ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre at ESEC, Belgium have been organised, aiming at offering a more complete preparation in satellite telecommunications and operations, especially oriented to those teams who will be involved in the spacecraft operations. n our website, you can read more about what the students learned during the Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Communications and Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Operations training courses.

At the conclusion of the spacecraft testing campaign, started in August 2018 at SITAEL’s premises in Italy, and concluded on 16 October 2018 at the ESA ESTEC test facilities in the Netherlands, an additional workshop for the ESEO university teams was organised in ESTEC by the ESA Education Office on 18 October 2018. Space engineers and satellite test experts from space industry (SITAEL) and ESA shared with the students all the processes and the technical issues that had to be solved during the satellite test campaign, in order to give the students the opportunity to reinforce their know-how and understanding of satellite engineering as a whole.