Our team and mission

This position is based at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) - Noordwijk, Netherlands

You will be a member of the GNC, AOCS and Pointing Division. With more than 40 staff and contractors, the Division is happy to welcome intern to contribute to its duties:

- PROJECT SUPPORT in the field of GNC (Guidance, Navigation and Control), AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control Systems) and Pointing engineering:

• Conceptual design studies for future missions GNC/AOCS, in particular in Concurrent Design Facilities (CDF) studies;
• GNC/AOCS design, system analysis and modelling for future and current missions from ESA Directorates.

- TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT:

• Definition of technology development requirements for space missions and ESA technology programmes;
• Mission enabling R/D activities for AOCS and Pointing Systems (competitive Building Blocks, high accuracy pointing, …);
• Mission enabling R/D activities for GNC (interplanetary cruise, aero assistance, precision landing, ascent, rendezvous and docking, re-entry, formation flying and drag free systems, …);
• Technology development of AOCS sensors and actuators;
• Fostering the utilisation of advanced control, estimation, verification and optimisation techniques.

- LABORATORY WORK:

• Evaluation and prototyping of GNC/AOCS sensors and actuators;
• Evaluation and prototyping of new GNC techniques (GNC Rendezvous, Approach and Landing, Optical Navigation);
• Evaluation and prototyping of new AOCS, pointing systems and associated subsystem hardware.
   

Candidates interested are encouraged to visit the ESA website: http://www.esa.int and websites of the main conferences (co-)organised by the GNC, AOCS & Pointing Division: ESA GNC Conference, ICATT and ADCSS.

Field(s) of activity for the internship

Topic of the internship: Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC), Attitude and Orbit Control Systems (AOCS)

You will work on AOCS and GNC techniques, for interplanetary missions, re-entry missions and smallsat. The internship will combine work on algorithms (incl. research) and hands-on activities (simulations and possibly use Laboratory facility for testing with Hardware-in-the-loop]. One of our facilities provides a way of testing a satellite’s orientation control with space-like dynamics (via a spherical air bearing) and physical stimulus of sensors.

ESA is currently investigating different future missions involving landing on dwarf planets or moons of giant planets as well as high precision landers on Mars. For all these missions, preliminary but at the same time accurate navigation analysis are required to trade-off different design options in terms of landing accuracy, reliability, complexity and cost.

The objective of the proposed work is to use the GODOT (https://godot.io.esa.int/godotpy/) software to perform orbit determination and on-board navigation performance analysis for these type of missions. You shall then set up a scenario where the lander separates from the orbiter and performs a deorbit and landing manoeuvre to land on the planet and determine the performance of a navigation system composed of an inertial measurement unit, a radar altimeter (or radar doppler altimeter) and a RF-link with the orbiter, providing range and range-rate measurements. 

Another task of the internship would be devoted to study an approach for an autonomous robust control system for re-entry flight that exploits Incremental Nonlinear Dynamic Inversion (INDI) and on-line (linear) Model Predictive Control (MPC) to facilitate combined guidance & control solutions while guaranteeing robustness and feasibility.

Finally, you will assist the team in integrating their hardware onto the test facility, run the tests and produce test reports. Experiments may also be performed with an ESA-owned cubesat attitude control subsystem.
This promises to be a rewarding internship through which you will gain direct insight into how AOCS and GNC systems works and behaves, from design to hands-on testing. 

Learning objectives include:

• gain working knowledge of GNC and AOCS functionality;
• gain experience working with test and flight hardware and testing environment protocols;
• gain experience designing tests, debugging them, executing test procedures and writing test reports;
• gain better understanding of Guidance, Navigation and Control algorithms definition, research state-of-the-art and optimal implementation for challenging missions such as interplanetary and re-entry;
• help the Guidance, Navigation and Control domains to progress as key enablers for future ESA missions.

Behavioural competencies

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

For more information, please refer to ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

You must be a university student, preferably in your final or second-to-last year of a university course at 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.

Knowledge and background in Estimation and Control techniques, as well as practice of Matlab/Simulink/C++/Python is an asset.