The Experience

This workshop will expose teams of students to real-life concurrent engineering approach practices while designing a CubeSat mission. Concurrent engineering is a specific method of designing and developing products simultaneously. Contrary to traditional design methods, in concurrent engineering all subsystems are designed synchronously. This is a far more efficient way of working but comes with its own unique challenge: solutions in one area that could impact the design of another subsystem must be instantly identified and communicated between teams. Although concurrent engineering is a more complex process to begin with, in effect it allows engineering discrepancies to be identified and rectified earlier, therefore reducing the overall design time and cost.

Following this approach, students will be split into discipline groups, such as thermal, power or propulsion, and be asked to work on the mission requirements established by the ESA experts playing the role of systems engineers in this workshop. In between concurrent engineering sessions, students will also be attending lectures and visiting the CubeSat Support Facility – which is an assembly, integration and testing facility for CubeSats. At the end of the week, students will present their CubeSat project developed in the workshop to the ESA experts. In addition, students will also have the opportunity to present a brief summary of their own university CubeSat projects and get valuable feedback from ESA experts. This is an enriching experience, especially because the teams participating are either considering starting or have recently started a university CubeSat project.

This is a unique learning opportunity for university students starting or planning a CubeSat project. Teams of students wishing to participate should not be at an advanced stage in their CubeSat project. They should be either at a conceptual or preliminary phase of their design.

Guided by ESA systems engineers, the students will learn about concurrent engineering and its benefits, gaining first-hand experience with Starion’s Concurrent Model-based Engineering Tool (CDP4-COMET) and identifying design drivers. Before the workshop, in order to get the most out of this experience, the selected students will follow a self-paced introductory online course about CDP4-COMET to allow them to become familiar with the tool the week before the workshop.

According to their background and interests, students will form groups as they are assigned to disciplines, such as:

Attitude and Orbital Control Systems (AOCS)
Communications
Configuration, Structures and Mechanisms
Data handling
Payload
Power
Propulsion
Thermal
Trajectory analysis

Within these groups, students will create a subsystem concept to achieve the given mission requirements using concurrent engineering. They will start with a first iteration of all the subsystems along with a budget that they will have to review and present. A second iteration will then be completed according to the identified function tree and product tree, and in the end, the final mission design will be presented by the students.

During the workshop, there will be a complementary lecture about ESA’s Fly Your Satellite! (FYS!) programme and ESA good practices. Participation in this Workshop may therefore be an excellent starting point for a possible future application to the FYS! Programme.

To enhance the learning experience, students will actively engage in a group project work throughout the week to apply their newly acquired knowledge. Upon successful completion, participants will be awarded a certificate of participation and a course transcript, enabling them to request ECTS credit(s) from their respective universities.

Preliminary schedule

During the workshop, the following topics will be covered:

Student team CubeSat projects presentations
Introduction to Concurrent Engineering and Requirements Management
Concurrent Model-based Engineering Tool (COMET)
Introduction to the CubeSat mission
Lecture about CubeSat architectures and mission design
Concurrent engineering iterations
Visit of ESEC-Redu
Visit of the CubeSat Support Facility
Final Student Presentations

About the training

Training type

Schedule