The ESA Education Office has recently launched the call for applications for Universities to participate in the fourth edition of the Concurrent Engineering Challenge, to be organised during the last quarter of 2020 by the ESA Education Office in collaboration with ESA’s Systems and Concurrent Engineering Section. Please find more information about this opportunity below.
Concurrent Engineering is a method of designing and developing products for the space sector in which all subsystems are designed simultaneously: solutions in one area that could impact the design in another are identified, communicated and assessed with the entire team. Although Concurrent Engineering is a more complicated process to begin with, in effect it allows for design challenges to be identified earlier, therefore reducing the overall design time.
The ESA Academy Concurrent Engineering Challenge 2020 will feature four groups of 20-30 University students at Master or PhD level. A first group will be selected, at a later stage, by ESA to participate from the ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Facility. The three other groups will be identified by the selected universities after summer and will participate from their respective Concurrent Engineering Facilities (CEFs).
Each group will be supervised by two systems engineers and will be given, at the start of the Challenge, the same space mission to design within five days. Students will be divided into small teams of two to four to cover the following disciplines: structures, configuration, power, mechanisms, thermal, attitude and orbit control system, propulsion, trajectory analysis and communications/data handling.
The groups will not compete against each other, but will rather use video conferencing and live messaging forums to share each day’s progress, raise any particular challenges they are facing, and receive feedback from the other participants. At the end of the week, each group will present their final design to the others.
In order to participate, universities should fill in the application form and must fulfil the following criteria:
- Be located in an ESA Member State;
- Have a CEF facility or commit to develop one for the Challenge;
- Have or commit to have a network of more than 15 dedicated computers in this facility;
- Have or commit to have capabilities for video conferencing in this facility;
- Use OCDT or commit to install the tool and learn how to use it before the Challenge;
- Have a professor appointed to coordinate the preparation and organisation of the Challenge at the University;
- Have two professors with some design knowledge and familiarity in space systems appointed as systems engineers for the Challenge;
- Have technician(s) to support the use of OCDT, Concord add-in, live forums and video conferencing system during the Challenge;
- Identify a potential group of 20-30 MSc or PhD students in the University to participate in the Challenge;
- Have support material to assist students during the design sessions such as books and specific domain software;
- Commit to collaborate with ESA and the other participating universities during the preparation and organisation of the Challenge.
The deadline for applications is 9 March 2020, 23:59 CET.
Please do not hesitate to contact the ESA Education Office for any questions and to share this information with your colleagues or on your website.
Best regards,
ESA Education Office
PS: Interested in ESA Academy’s training sessions in other domains? Have a look at our current opportunities on http://www.esa.int/Education/ESA_Academy/Current_opportunities