Intern in the Ground Systems Engineering and Innovation Department

Our team and mission

The Ground Systems Engineering and Innovation Department is responsible for all the ground systems engineering and support activities required to support mission operations and implement innovation. The Department maintains and manages a full level of competences, technologies and services in all engineering disciplines related to ground systems, infrastructure, technology evolution and Engineering R&T and innovation. The Department provides expert support in these areas to the Directorate for all current and potential missions and leads, in the role of architect, ground systems evolution and innovation implementation in the infrastructure. The Department is furthermore responsible for the overall technical standardisation coordination for the ground segment, in the Management Council of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS).

The Mission Analysis Section is part of the Flight Dynamics division and is entrusted with mission studies for future terrestrial, lunar and interplanetary missions as well as scientific missions located in planetary or lunar libration points with emphasis on trajectory and attitude related aspects, and on supporting ground segment design and operations. This includes trade-offs for selection of the nominal mission trajectory, definition of maneuvering strategies, optimization of orbital manoeuvres (low- and high-thrust propulsion, including rocket ascent and re-entry trajectories), calculation of propellant budget, analysis of launch window, analysis of orbit perturbations and related station-keeping strategies, navigation, planetary protection and space debris mitigation. The task also includes development of the necessary analytical and numerical methods and software tools.

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

Field(s) of activity for the internship

You can choose between the following topics:

1) Topic 1: Automatic extension of interplanetary transfers via Earth gravity assists

The Mission Analysis Section at ESOC has developed a tool to find the most promising interplanetary transfers using multiple planetary fly-bys.  Once a solution is found (leaving from the Earth to e.g., Jupiter via Venus, Earth and Mars gravity assists), additional legs only involving the Earth can be added: pi-transfer, pseudo-resonance, full resonance; each time with a standard Earth gravity assist or with the novel concept of Lunar-Earth gravity assist. These legs create new launch options (leaving the Earth earlier than the reference) and also allow to apply Vinfinity leveraging, thus performance improvement.  A tool to automatically generate these new options shall be created in this project. It would also add to the reference trajectory computation of the launch window. 

Adding on top a simplified model for the stochastic cost (navigation) would make possible a high-level comparison of many options. The tool would be validated on existing missions, e.g., JUICE

2) Topic 2: GPU Assisted Trajectory Propagations

In Mission Analysis the most common calculations is the numerical propagation of a spacecraft trajectory. For these calculations a numerical integration routine typically evaluates a right hand side of a differential equation, which contains the force models including e.g. the evaluation of the planetary ephemeris, solar radiation pressure, a detailed gravity model, an atmosphere model, a radiation model, etc.  These calculations can take a significant time of the overall computational time. Many computers are also equipped with a graphical processing unit these days. 

A tool performing the full trajectory propagation on the GPU exists in the Mission Analysis Section for Monte Carlos propagations. Within this thesis it shall be investigated if the models, which have been developed for a computation on a GPU, can speed up the trajectory propagations of the Astrodynamics Tool GODOT executed on a CPU based system by “outsourcing” some of the model evaluations on the GPU. E.g. while the CPU evaluates the planetary ephemeris, the GPU could evaluate the gravity model in parallel and provide the result by the time the ephemeris calculation has been finished. 
Due to the significant diversity of hardware (single to hundreds of CPU cores) a tool would need to be prototyped to suggest the user which calculations should be pushed to the GPU on a specific system configuration.

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.