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ESA Ladybird Guide to Spacecraft Communication Training Course 2017
14-17 February 2017

Status: call for applications: closed; training course delivered. 

Description: Students will learn 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 will be delivered through formal lectures without excessive mathematics or technical jargon, but with a heavy emphasis placed on the interaction with the students.

Preliminary 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
 
 

Gravity-Related Experiments training week 2017 
16-19 January 2017

Status: training course delivered.

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 they will be helped to achieve their objectives. The idea is 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 is to increase the quality of collected data and the success rate of the students’ hands-on projects.

Schedule Overview:

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
 
 

Human Space Physiology training course 2017
30 January - 2 February 2017

Status: Call for application closed. training course delivered

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 have been 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 have been 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.
 
 

Post-Alpbach School Summer School event 2016
21-24 November 2016

Status: Call for applications closed on 9 September 2016; only opened to students who participated in the Alpbach Summer School 2016; training course delivered

Description: Students got the opportunity to carry on working on the PoPSAT (Polar Precipitation SATellite) project proposed by the team Blue during the Alpbach Summer School 2016. The objective of this event is to prepare a scientific paper to be presented at an international conference or published in a scientific journal. Students will be supported by ESA and external experts, and will be offered the opportunity to use the ESA Academy's Concurrent Design Facility (CDF).

 
 

Ladybird Guide to Space Operations training course 2016
11-14 October 2016

Status: call for applications: closed; training course delivered.

Description:  Students will learn 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 will be 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 Workshop 2016
20-23 September 2016

Status: call for applications closed; training course delivered

Description: Students will learn about concurrent engineering and its benefits for space missions. Guided by ESA experts, the students will learn to use the Open Concurrent Design Tool and identify design drivers. Divided into teams, they will first create a subsystem concept to later achieve an already identified mission concept, function tree and product tree, using concurrent engineering. With this, students will also contribute to beta-testing and improving ESA Academy Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) tools, whose development is under finalisation.  

 
 

ESA/ELGRA Gravity-Related Research Summer School 2016
27 June-2 July 2016

Status: call for applications closed; training course delivered

Description: The aim of this Summer School was to promote gravity-related research amongst future scientists and engineers and attract them to its multiple research opportunities available in the space sector. During this week, students had the opportunity to attend lectures, explaining the wide range of applications and advantages of performing life and physical sciences research at different gravity levels. Students learned about the several existing platforms available for this type of research: from parabolic flights, to the human centrifuge, to the International Space Station (ISS). Students got the chance to work in small groups to come up with ideas for possible gravity-related experiments.

Schedule Overview:

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
Team project
Visit of Redu Centre
Day 2 Life science research
Physiology research
Visit of Euro Space Centre
Day 3 Physical science research
Develop a gravity-related experiment
Team project
Day 4 Space project life cycle
Former student projects
Project management
Visit of Centre Spatial de Liège
Team project
Day 5 Team project presentations
 
 

ESA Hands-on experiment projects training week 2016
14-17 March 2016

Status: training course delivered

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’ Drop Your Thesis! and Spin Your Thesis! programmes, by providing them with the information and basic knowledge that they is required to design, develop, test, and perform a gravity-related scientific experiment or technology demonstration. The idea was to optimise 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 Overview:

Day 1 Introduction to ESA, ESA programmes and opportunities
Student teams presentations
Develop a scientific experiment
SELGRA
Physical sciences at different g levels
Day 2 Life sciences at different g levels
Human Physiology at different g levels
Former student projects
Meet your experts (session 1)
Day 3 Meet your experts (session 2)
Visit of Redu Centre
System Engineering workshop
Day 4 Project and Risk Management workshop
Experiment Automation workshop
Outreach Workshop
Inspirational lecture
Visit of Euro Space Centre