Space Safety Intern: Flyeye Network & NEO Modelling

European Space Agency - ESA; Frascati; On-site; EUR 8,900 - 13,000; Full time

Job summary

European Space Agency (ESA) offers an internship in the Space Safety Programme – Planetary Defence Office in Frascati. You will join the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre observers team, contributing to modeling the Flyeye network and adapting Sorcha to simulate discovery-rate performance.

You will explore strategy trade-offs, scale exposure settings, and assess how Flyeye complements LSST, while gaining hands-on experience with a widely used survey simulator and collaboration across space

Qualifications

• Must be a university student, preferably in final or second-to-last year of a Master’s programme.
• Able to prove enrollment for entire duration of the internship.

Responsibilities

• Review the survey simulator architecture and its LSST usage.
• Build a Flyeye-specific configuration: telescope parameters, cadence, field footprint, and network geometry.
• Characterise the network's discovery performance.
• Run comparative simulations to test observing strategies (depth vs. sky coverage).
• Assess Flyeye's coverage relative to LSST and how to operate Flyeye units together.

Skills

Python

Orbital mechanics

Data visualization

Statistical analysis

Independent work

Education

Master's degree track in astronomy/astrophysics/physics/planetary science or related field

Enrollment to complete duration of internship

Tools

numpy

pandas

astropy

Job description

European Space Agency (ESA) offers an internship in the Space Safety Programme – Planetary Defence Office in Frascati. You will join the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre observers team, contributing to modeling the Flyeye network and adapting Sorcha to simulate discovery-rate performance.

You will explore strategy trade-offs, scale exposure settings, and assess how Flyeye complements LSST, while gaining hands-on experience with a widely used survey simulator and collaboration across space