Gaia OPS-SAT Mission Operations Unit, Mission Operations

Under the direct authority of the Head of the Mission Operations Department, the Head of the Astronomy and Fundamental Physics Missions Division is responsible for the ground segment and mission operations implementation for the ESA scientific missions that do not travel into interplanetary space. The responsibilities of the Division start typically from Phase B through in-flight commissioning to routine mission operations until the end of the mission. The Head of Division acts as the OPS interface to the ESA Project (and later Mission) Manager of these missions and carries responsibility for all technical, financial and schedule aspects of the ground segment and operations implementation and execution. The Head of the Division is responsible for directing and executing flight operations of ESA missions in all mission phases, in particular acting as Flight Operations Director for pre-flight simulations, for Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) and critical and commissioning phase operations.

Field(s) of activity for the internship

The topic of the internship: OPS-SAT Space Lab Experimenter Support and Operations

OPS-SAT Space Lab is an international award-winning project which for the first time allows European and Canadian external experimenters to develop, load and execute their software and firmware in space for no charge. The first mission, OPS-SAT-1, (2019 – 2024) has now finished and several follow-on missions are in development. In preparation for their launches, the Lab is evolving from a single mission to a multi-mission infrastructure. Many experimenters have used the Lab, ranging from other space agencies such as NASA, JAXA, CNES and DLR, to big primes such as Airbus down to university departments and start-ups. ESA must support the experimenters, helping them get familiar with the OPS-SAT onboard environment and how to control the many sensors, actuators and payloads. The student will provide this support by directly interacting with the experimenters and arranging tests of their experiments through the various parts of the lifecycle and finally supervising the tests on the real spacecraft. The student will also support the development cycle of spacecraft in preparation.

Through these activities, you will be exposed to many of the important domains making up mission control and many of these institutions and companies.

Required Qualifications

You must be a university student, preferably in your final or second-to-last year of a university course at the Master’s level and you need to remain enrolled at your University for the entire duration of the internship.

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.

Proven experience in some sort of software development (e.g. Linux, Python) is essential. Any experience in programming FPGAs, optical communication or cubesat projects would be an asset.