Our team and mission

The Mission Analysis Section is located within the Flight Dynamics Division of the Ground Systems Engineering and Innovation Department.

The Mission Analysis Section 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 the selection of the nominal mission trajectory, definition of manoeuvring strategies, optimisation of orbital manoeuvres (low- and high-thrust propulsion, including rocket ascent trajectories), calculation of the propellant budget, analysis of the launch window, analysis of orbit perturbations and navigation. The task also includes developing the necessary analytical and numerical methods and software tools.

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

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

With the subscription by ESA member states to the Argonaut (EL3) project at the  2022 ESA Council meeting at ministerial level, CM22, Europe confirmed its interest in playing a key role in future lunar surface exploration. This opens up a new business field for mission design: while orbital dynamics and trajectory optimisation have been the classic focus of mission analysis, surface missions add a new aspect to the portfolio: landing site selection and rover traverse planning.

These processes are based on environmental conditions such as illumination, communication windows with Earth and visibility of artificial assets in space (e.g. Gateway or Moonlight) and on the Moon (potentially existing infrastructure from previous missions). To derive these time-dependent parameters for areas of interest, digital elevation models of the lunar surface are used to generate local horizon masks for predefined sites, which are then compared to the target position to calculate visibility / occultation periods.

Since this is a computationally onerous and therefore time-consuming process, analysing several thousand or even millions of grid points in an area of interest is unfeasible without massive parallelisation. Given their design, GPUs are highly suitable candidates for solving this issue. So far, the surface analysis tool developed by the Section is only designed to be used on CPUs.

You will contribute to the goal of this project, which is to enhance the Section's surface analysis capabilities by optimising the existing tool for GPUs. This includes updates to the code, testing and participation in the preparation for publishing the tool on ESAs Space Codev platform. This will facilitate comprehensive studies of regions of interest (like the lunar south pole) and the selection of promising landing-site candidates for future surface missions.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation

Operational Efficiency

Fostering Cooperation

Relationship Management

Continuous Improvement

Forward Thinking

Education

You should have just completed, or be in the final year of your Master’ s degree in engineering, computer science, physics or a similar discipline.

Additional requirements

You should have good interpersonal and communication skills and should be able to work in a multicultural environment, both independently and as part of a team.

Experience in parallel computing would be considered an asset.

You should have a technical background with knowledge in coding (particularly Python and/or Cuda).

Experience in object-orientated programming or geoinformatics would be considered an asset.

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.

During the interview, your motivation and overall professional career goals will also be explored.