Intern in the Mission Operations Department

Our team and mission

The Mission Operations Department is responsible for the preparation and conducting of flight operations for all ESA missions. For this purpose, the Head of the Mission Operations Department is the primary interface of OPS towards the Programme Directorates. In addition to operational support to ESA customer missions, the Head of Department is responsible for the support to missions of external customers and, in particular, to missions of other space agencies. Operational activities include both spacecraft and related ground segment operations.

OPS-SAT is a 3U CubeSat launched by the European Space Agency on December 18th 2019. The mission is to demonstrate the improvements in mission control capabilities that will arise when satellites can fly more powerful on-board computers. As a flying laboratory, it tests and validates new techniques in mission control and on-board systems. OPS-SAT is the world’s only spacecraft freely open for public use. It carries state of the art equipment and is controlled via the SMILE lab at ESA’s ESOC Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

SMILE is ESA's mini-mission control facilities. It is a new, open-to-use, flexible mission control and validation environment based at ESA’s operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany. It is made up of a lab and two antennas (ESOC-1 and ESOC-1a) and is known more formally as the Special Mission Infrastructure Lab Environment. The SMILE lab and antennas provide operators with the ability to test and validate their missions and control systems, for example by supporting cubesats or testing and validating mission control systems before launch and exploring innovative operations concepts.

For further information visit our web site: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity for the internship

Topic: Support of OPS-SAT Space Lab operations, SMILE lab and Operations outreach

As an intern, you will support the OPS-SAT Space Lab and the SMILE Facilities at ESOC as well as Outreach activities. For OPS-SAT (https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/OPS-SAT) launched in 2019, you will support the many experimenters ranging from other space agencies such as CNES and DLR, to big primes such as Airbus down to university departments and start-ups. You will supervise the tests on the real spacecraft.

In the context of the ESA Special Mission Infrastructure Lab Environment (www.esa.int/smile) you will support the OPS-SAT mission support from the ground station side and remotely support the validation of the new Reindeer antenna in Sweden.

In the context of the Outreach activities, you will support the ESA’s Operations directorate with a conceptual study.

Through these activities, you will be exposed to many of the important domains making up mission operations.

Behavioural competencies

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

Education

You must have student status and 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.

Educational knowledge:
Proven experience in software development (Linux, Python and C/C++ especially).
Holding a Radio Amateur license equivalent to CEPT T/R 61-01 would be an asset.