ESA Academy kicks off 2023 with a rich portfolio of training sessions
During the first quarter of 2023 ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Programme delivered 5 training sessions to a total of 147 enthusiastic university students from ESA Member States, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia who travelled to the ESA Education Training Centre at ESEC-Galaxia in Belgium to complement their knowledge and know-how and prepare for a future space-related career.
Amongst others the third edition of the Space Systems Engineering Training Course, which took place from 31 January to 3 February. Here, 30 students discovered the role of a Systems Engineer at each stage of the mission lifecycle - from user needs to launch, operations, and spacecraft disposal.
The students put their new knowledge into practice in a variety of group exercises, including writing top-level requirements for a mission to collect samples from Mars, creating a concept of operations and basic mission architecture, and performing a trade-off on the different mission options. They were also introduced to project management from a Systems Engineer viewpoint, learning how to tackle some of the challenges in project scheduling and resource management often faced in today’s space industry by playing a specially designed board game.
“The training course far exceeded my expectations: more than fascinating lectures, ESA Academy provided a space to meet and get inspired by fellow students and lecturers. I left the course energized and with plenty of new ideas to share with the world. The group exercises allowed experiencing real-world problems faced by space system engineers, complementing the theoretical knowledge taught at university.” Mentioned a Belgian student from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).
Two weeks later, from 14 to 17 February, another group of 29 students joined the fourth edition of the CubeSat Concurrent Engineering Workshop. These students were part of university CubeSat teams who were interested in learning how to apply Concurrent Engineering methodologies to their CubeSat design. Students were introduced to the basics of Concurrent Engineering and challenged with designing a mission to perform a close approach of one CubeSat (the chaser) towards a mechanical capture interface on another CubeSat (the target) to demonstrate technologies that could be used for In-Orbit Servicing.
Working in subsystem teams with the support of ESA Systems Engineers, they used the Concurrent Model-based Engineering Tool (COMET) to go through several iterations of their design concurrently, learning a lot in the process. After a few days of hard work, the students from each subsystem team presented their final design and the trade-offs that had led them to it.
From 28 to 31 March the third edition of the Clean Space Training Course was held. Here, 29 students learned about the topics of EcoDesign, Management of End-Of-Life, and In-Orbiting Servicing. The Clean Space course covered approaches that considered the environmental impact across the entire life cycle of a space mission, and focussed on how to design a satellite that will not generate debris, will remove defunct satellites and debris already in orbit, and will be environmentally friendly.
The students worked on a variety of group exercises during the week, which culminated in a challenge to minimise the environmental impact of a fictional satellite mega-constellation while maximising compliance with space debris mitigation guidelines.
In all three training sessions, the experts were very impressed with the students’ work and the innovative ideas they had.
To find more information on upcoming ESA Academy training sessions and opportunities, visit https://www.esa.int/Education/ESA_Academy/Current_opportunities
For inquiries contact tlp@esa.int.
