Space Systems Intern: Fault Management & Data Analysis

EU Satellite Centre (SatCen); Noordwijk; On-site; EUR 8,900 - 13,000; Full time

Job summary

ESA's ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands invites motivated university students for a spacecraft internship focused on Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR). You will analyse operational data, review anomaly reports and help map insights to future mission designs.

Working with systems engineers, reliability and operations specialists, you will develop lessons learned databases and contribute to toolchains that improve mission robustness and autonomy.

Qualifications

• You must be a university student, preferably in your final or second-to-last year of university course at Master's level.
• You must be able to prove that you will be enrolled at your university for the entire duration of the internship.
• The working languages are English and French; good knowledge of one is required.
• Knowledge of spacecraft systems engineering and FDIR concepts is an asset.
• Experience with Python, databases or data analytics tools is an asset.
• Strong analytical and structured thinking skills with the ability to communicate technical findings.

Responsibilities

• Analysing spacecraft anomaly reports, operational events and mission databases from multiple ESA missions.
• Identifying failures, false positives, nuisance alarms and operational workarounds related to Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery.
• Assessing the effectiveness of monitoring strategies, recovery actions and autonomous fault management concepts.
• Identifying recurring weaknesses, missing observability, excessive complexity or design shortcomings in monitoring and recovery architectures.
• Collecting evidence-based lessons learned and mapping them to engineering recommendations for future missions.
• Supporting the development and maintenance of a structured database of spacecraft monitors, recovery actions and operational experience.
• Contributing to the evolution of engineering tools supporting Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery design and analysis.
• Supporting the consolidation of traceability between anomaly reports, failure modes, monitoring mechanisms and recovery concepts.
• Contributing to updates of the ESA SAVOIR FDIR Handbook and associated lessons learned repositories.
• Supporting comparative analyses across missions to identify common fault management patterns and best practices.
• Participating in technical discussions with system, reliability and operations engineers.

Skills

Space systems engineering

Failure Detection

Data analysis

Python

Education

Master's degree

Tools

Python

Databases

Data analytics tools

Job description

ESA's ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands invites motivated university students for a spacecraft internship focused on Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery (FDIR). You will analyse operational data, review anomaly reports and help map insights to future mission designs.

Working with systems engineers, reliability and operations specialists, you will develop lessons learned databases and contribute to toolchains that improve mission robustness and autonomy.