Intern - Lunar Navigation PVT & GNSS Algorithms

EU Satellite Centre (SatCen); Noordwijk; On-site; EUR 12,000 - 18,000; Full time

Job summary

European Space Agency's Moonlight internship at ESTEC, Noordwijk, focuses on advanced lunar navigation algorithms to estimate Position, Velocity, and Time using a single navigation satellite. You will develop, test, and validate PVT techniques in a lunar environment, contributing to early deployment scenarios.

You should be a university student with MATLAB/Python skills, fluent in English or French, and prepared to work throughout the internship with enthusiasm and curiosity about GNSS in space.

Qualifications

• Must be a university student, preferably in final or second-to-last year of Master’s program.
• Enrollment for the entire duration of the internship.
• Working languages are English and French; knowledge of another ESA language is an asset.

Responsibilities

• conduct research and develop innovative algorithms for Position, Velocity and Time estimation in the lunar environment using a single Moonlight navigation satellite;
• develop, implement and validate the PVT algorithm(s) through simulation and performance assessment activities;
• perform sensitivity analyses to assess impacts of key error sources (ODTS and receiver clock errors);
• investigate additional lunar environment data sources such as DEMs and ESA Pathfinder signals to improve navigation performance;
• evaluate algorithm performance under different lunar deployment scenarios, including the initial Moonlight phase when only one satellite is available.

Skills

Research skills

Algorithm design

GNSS knowledge

Education

Master's student

Tools

MATLAB

Python

Job description

European Space Agency's Moonlight internship at ESTEC, Noordwijk, focuses on advanced lunar navigation algorithms to estimate Position, Velocity, and Time using a single navigation satellite. You will develop, test, and validate PVT techniques in a lunar environment, contributing to early deployment scenarios.

You should be a university student with MATLAB/Python skills, fluent in English or French, and prepared to work throughout the internship with enthusiasm and curiosity about GNSS in space.