Intern in the Space Safety Programme - Space Weather Office

Our team and mission

The ESA Space Safety Programme Office takes care of all potential hazards from space or in space, which can impact human activities on Earth or again in space. The spectrum of tasks ranges from gathering the basic understanding of space hazards originating from our Sun, from man-made space debris, or from asteroids potentially colliding with the Earth. It also addresses basic approaches to mitigate these hazards and to implement space systems end-to-end in a sustainable and eco-compatible way. Moreover, several corner stone missions are underway to demonstrate basic methods of space weather forecasting, asteroid deflection and active space debris removal from orbit.

In execution of these tasks, the Space Safety Office has the following entities:

• Space Weather Office
• Planetary Defence Office
• Space Debris Office
• Clean Space Office
• Frequency Management Office

You are encouraged to visit the ESA website: www.esa.int/ESA

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

1) topic 1: Small space weather mission concepts
Space Weather Office is developing European capability to monitor solar activity and space environment to provide observation data for operational space weather applications. As part of the development of the Distributed Space Weather Sensor System (D3S), ESA is designing space weather missions based on SmallSats and nanosatellites. In this internship opportunity you will be working with the space segment team in the Space Weather Office analysing and developing the small space weather mission concepts further towards mission implementation.
A particular focus of the work will be in the analysis and monitoring of the mission concept studies awarded based on the nanosatellite Community Challenge that was carried out in autumn 2021. You will have a chance to monitor and analyse the work by the mission teams and to bring your ideas and inputs into the definition of future nanosatellite mission targeting operational applications.

2) topic 2: Tools and techniques for characterising the maturity of space weather services
Space Weather is impacting the space environment around the Earth and the infrastructure that we have built to support our society, commercial activities and monitoring of our environment in many ways. Space weather can damage satellites in orbit, endanger the health of astronauts, disturb navigation and telecommunication signals from satellites and, for example, damage power grids on the ground. Space Weather office is responsible for developing, testing and validating services that provide owners and operators of the sensitive infrastructure information about the forecasted space weather and space weather events in progress. This project will focus on tools and techniques for characterising the maturity of space weather services. The successful candidate will be responsible for implementing and testing new tools and demonstrating their performance based on state-of-the-art space weather services available via ESA's space weather service portal.

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

Education

You must be enrolled at university for the entire duration of the internship. You should preferably be in your final or second to last year of a University course at master's level in a technical or scientific discipline.

Additional requirements

The working languages of the Agency are English and French. A good knowledge of one of these is required. Knowledge of another Member State language would be an asset.

Knowledge and background in engineering modelling, simulation and mathematics is an asset.