Courses
Stratospheric Balloons: an initiation project
Teachers
- Victoria Barabash
- Rene Laufer
- Hassan Sabbah
This is a project-based course in which students run a regular high-altitude balloon program going through an entire cycle of a space mission. They start by analyzing previous stratospheric balloon missions developed by students. Then in small specialized teams they tackle the various aspects of a space mission: mechanical, thermal, electric architecture; attitude control and navigation (passive), power generation and management, on-board data handling, data telemetry, payload operation and data acquisition, as well as project management. After having chosen one or several science objectives, the students design, build and test (including vacuum and cryogenics) their payload to study the atmosphere or to test a new technology in space. By the end of the first semester, the balloon payload is then launched from Aire-sur-l’Adour in collaboration with the balloon division of CNES (and/or in Kiruna with SNSA).
The main goal of this course is to create an environment in which students can plan and perform a balloon project mission with a scientific payload and critically select and evaluate relevant scientific and technical information within the subject. After completing the course, the students will be able to define primary and secondary objectives for their mission by writing detailed specifications and an efficient working flow package. Students will be also able to analyze and propose future improvements and developments and identify further knowledge needs and take responsibility for self- knowledge progress. Students will also have experience of writing proposals to the French Space Agency (CNES), and/or Swedish Space Agency SNSA.
Skills
Systems engineering, project management, solving conflicting constraints, writing space documentation and reports.
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Introduction to Space Medicine
Teachers
- Mateusz Danioł
- Florent Destruhaut
- Safouane Hamdi
- Agneta Larsson
This introduction to Spatial Medicine is designed for non-specialists and will offer an introduction to the space environment. It will subsequently provide an insight on space physiology and medicine, considering the impact of space flights on health and the associated adaptations and modifications of the human body (metabolism, bone and muscles, sleep, cells and molecules…). It will also give an overview of the different types of risks for health existing in Space environments and on possible solutions to monitor and solve a health problem during space flights (use of medication, oral biology…). The different models for ground simulation of spaceflight effects will also be presented. Finally, it will help students to better understand the link between Space, Medicine technology and cognitive sciences. Thanks to an introduction to space applications for health on Earth, the students will be involved in practical cases on how to collect health data in spaceflights and simulation experiments.
The course level and contents will be adapted according to the existing programmes in which it will be integrated (most probably Bachelor last year/Master 1 level) but a scientific background is needed. The idea is to offer this introductory course to future engineers or entrepreneurs who will work on space applications linked to Health and Medicine and who will need a global overview combining basic knowledge of medicine and of the major issues/challenges regarding Health and Space.
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Cubesat platform: an introduction
- Oliver Bernal
- Rene Laufer
- Gaëtan Prigent
The project is an introduction to the management of the satellite platform in terms of communication, electronics (digital and analog), power management, thermal management). It is based on the use of realistic, low-cost models of 2U cubesats, including all the functions of the nanosatellite, including:
- On Board Computer, CPU
- Communication cards
- RF frontend card
- Power management cards
- Sensors
- GPS
- Inertial unit
- Payload cards (camera)
- Solar panels
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Satellite Communications: regulation and Business
Teachers
- Mahulena Hofmann
- Sivakumar BACTAVATCHALOU
- Marie-Laure Boucheret
Nowadays, with the emergence of new space technology, to stay competitive in the space industry, students need to develop an expertise and knowledge in the fields of business and law. This interdisciplinary course will combine technical with law and business aspects of satellite communication systems. Students will submerge themselves into an interdisciplinary work environment and collaborate with other students from either a law or technical background. They will work together to solve problems in teams, which is also an asset from the societal point of view.
For the technically educated students, the courses are eye-opening in presenting the regulatory and business aspects of space activities. For the law students, the exchange with the technically trained students is enriching as they will cooperate with technical experts in the practice and must at least understand the problems which they are expected to solve. For both groups, the business aspect of satellite communications systems will be new and enlarge their competences. The interdisciplinarity of the course is a simulation of situations in a real employment world.
Our goal is to build the bridges between the different fields to reach a common goal and break the silos of traditional work environments.
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Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything Module 1: The buddies in space
Teachers
- Guillaume Loizelet
- Justyna Topolska
Is life a consciousness of the universe or just a thermodynamically egoistic rebel?
Join the course, get inspired and speak up you own concept!
The main aim of the course is to broaden the horizons of cognition in terms of understanding life processes, concepts of the presence of life in the Universe and more broadly the scientific approach in general. Hard knowledge on the current and historical concepts on the evolution of life, origin of life, methodology of investigating early life processes as well as principles of metabolism, extreme microbial environments, new technology concepts of microbial applications in Space colonization will be presented.
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Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything Module 2: History of astronomy
Teachers
- Guillaume Loizelet
- Justyna Topolska
This is a project-base course in which students put themselves in the position of ancient astronomers and try to develop their own mathematical models in order to predict the position of one of the five planets that can be observed with the naked eye.
The main goal of the course is for students to experiment the scientific method: confronting tough questions, making small but incremental progress and taking advantage of feedback.
The historical field will be the students’ playground. The first courses will explain some of the ancients findings on mathematical astronomy such as the neo-babylonians’ zig-zag functions and Ptolemy’s geometrical models. Then students will choose one planet, one location, and one period of time and will produce their own models and confront them to the real motions of the planet using the Stellarium software.
The range of the historical discussion will go from the middle of the third millennium BP to Einstein’s breakthrough in the early twentieth century: the questions of the ancient astronomers may be seen as natural ones, their answers may be seen as cultural ones, but what is really at stake in this course is about the search for understanding what might not be understood and the long term process of mankind trying to figure it out.
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Medical engineering for Space and Earth
Teachers
- Mateusz Danioł
- Florent Destruhaut
- Safouane Hamdi
- Josef Kozak
- Agneta Larsson
- Jessica Ljungberg
- Ryszard Sroka
It’s hard to imagine long-lasting manned space missions without personalized healthcare provided onboard, and it is hard to imagine modern space healthcare without engineering and technology. In this course students will get an overview of current trends and challenges in medical technology for space. The course focuses on the technologies which are currently in use and on technologies which might make long-term space-flights possible in the near future. All the aspects are presented both in a general and a specific manner through several practical scenarios.
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Elastic metamaterials and actuators for space applications
Teachers
- Pawel Packo
- François Pigache
Mechatronic space structures require particular solutions in terms of their efficiency, robustness and precision for equipment which is required to operate for several decades without maintenance. In this context the piezoelectric technology associated with particular material properties can bring multidomain solutions for actuation, mechanical insulation, or energy harvesting. New opportunities in terms of dynamical mechanical response are brought by elastic metamaterials.
Metamaterials are a new class of materials that exhibit extraordinary properties. In the context of dynamics, they can display negative effective mass and/or stiffness, extending the classical design space of engineering materials. Therefore, they can be very attractive for designing high-performance multipurpose devices.
In this course students will learn about applications of elastic metamaterials for various mechatronic space devices, in particular energy harvesters, actuators, sensors and electro-mechanical transformers; and how metamaterials can be designed and used for substantially improving dynamic properties of these systems. students will have an opportunity to design a device – from theoretical principles to simulations – prototyping it and performing its physical electro-mechanical testing.
The course is composed of 8 classes in which we present the necessary theoretical and practical background, followed by a 4-class students’ project oriented on designing, assembling and testing a prototypical device. Finally, students are involved in an industry-level project supported and supervised by top-class experts from the space sector.
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Monitoring and economic control of climate change
Teachers
- Ludovic Bouilloud
- Gilles Lafforgue
- Mathias Milz
- Olivier Pannekoucke
Following this, the economical dimension will be addressed and this course will focus essentially on two aspects. The first aspect addressed is the risk management of weather-sensitive activities and the second part will focus on the understanding of the economic aspects of climate change.
The final target is to give students the capacity to understand climate issues, to understand and assess the associated public policies and to take appropriate decisions in their personal and professional activities.
To address these questions, this course consists of lectures given by experts of ENM, Lulea University and Toulouse Business School, active learning and personal projects requiring an answer by students to a problem elaborated by an expert of socio-economic activities.
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Snow and Ice throughout the Solar System
Teachers
- Axel Hagermann
- Justyna Topolska
The course presents phenomena related to ice and snow, in the atmosphere and on the ground. It covers Earth and also other planetary bodies such as Mars, where both water and carbon dioxide ice exist. The course will start with the physical foundations in terms of phase diagrams, equations of state and ice lattice structures and finish with the environmental effects of ice on Earth, and how life, humans and ice interact. 2 practical projects will consist of field observations of snow and ice, including their structure and properties. Another practical will enable students to compare water and carbon dioxide ice. In a group project the students will put isotope data of terrestrial ice cores into the context of climate change.
The practical project will consist of snow sampling near Kiruna (Swedish Lapland) at a selection of field sites throughout the course, evaporating the water and analysing the refractory residue using AGH laboratories (Poland). Interpretation and analysis in the context of climate change will be provided. The results will be archived across academic years, giving future cohorts of students access to more time-resolved data.
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Space Innovation, Business & Law
Teachers
- Christophe BENAROYA
- Martin STIERLE
- Eric TSCHIRHART
- Emmanuel ZENOU
In a fast-growing space environment, there is a crucial need to cross-combine skills and expertise to speed up space project development, be it in terms of technical/technological, business or legal acumen. Time has come to interact and work in a collaborative and comprehensive way and from the outset between all key stakeholders.
This course aims at providing to the participants, whatever their educational or cultural background, not only a “common language” but also an efficient working culture combining technical, legal and business dimensions, enabling them to work more efficiently on the design and development of space-related projects, with a shared mindset.
A key feature of the course is the blend of students of different backgrounds, combined with eye-opening course material; with this configuration, interdisciplinarity is total. The subjects treated will focus on giving the students the opportunity to engage in both the entrepreneurial challenges associated with innovation and start-up marketing; as well as the legal and business issues associated with space economy and intellectual property.
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English C1: Terms and Concepts of Space
Teachers
- Sonja Bretschneider
- Anna Krukiewicz-Gacek
- Lars Lienen
This is a multidisciplinary course. Students will explore the world of Space, while improving their professional English for their future studies and employment opportunities. Participants will also understand terminologies and concepts for fields relevant to the space sector as part of the UNIVERSEH programme (e.g. “space, earth, natural sciences, medicine, humanities”) and contribute to the development of an illustrated Dictionary of Space Concepts that we are developing in cooperation with the Computer Linguistics Dept. There will be many opportunities to practice different text styles, such as interviewing, biographical notes, reports, and reflection writing. As an online course, digital media are endemic to the classroom environment, and the synchronous meetings will be supplemented with asynchronous tasks that will help students prepare for class and apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. Continuous cooperation, peer review, video creation, and illustrations for the DSC, will result in a tangible product at the end of the term.
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Machine learning in robotics and edge devices for space exploration
Teachers
- Marcus Liwicki
- Hamam Mokayed
- Andrzej Skoczeń
- Maciej Wielgosz
The course provides a wide insight into neural network (NN) algorithms and their hardware implementation. The development of NN applications is typically carried out using GPUs and requires a long calculation time. The course gives participants the ability to accelerate and shorten inferring latency using dedicated hardware with limited resources. Although this idea can be adopted in many different applications from many disciplines, the course demonstrates practical examples from space-related research projects. The main goal is to motivate, illustrate, and experience the impact of Machine Language (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the space sector.
Besides the emphasis on creating practical design on the available hardware platforms, the course presents a survey of commercially available (and recently introduced by leading manufacturers) systems for hardware implementation of neural algorithms. A survey of dedicated processors with neural architectures currently being developed is also covered.
Another fascinating subject in the course concerns emerging technologies dedicated to future hardware neuromorphic systems currently in the R&D stage.
The huge innovation potential of ML is strongly emphasised during the course. Practical examples of innovative projects are presented to illustrate the impact of ML and AI in business activity.
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Arctic Winter School
Teachers
- Victoria Barabash
- Anna Krukiewicz-Gacek
- Annacarin Larsson
- Gaëtan Prigent
Arctic Winter School is an introductory course for students from different academic fields and from all UniversEH partner universities that gives insight into the interdisciplinary fields of Arctic space, environment and culture:
- Environment and society in the changing Arctic. The Arctic Five collaboration.
- Polar atmosphere and its significance for solar-terrestrial interactions, space weather.
- Auroral physics and observations.
- Optical phenomena in the polar regions.
- Snow and ice in different perspectives.
- Arctic climate systems and climate change.
- Nano satellites and balloons for polar research.
- Product innovation for Arctic space.
- Terminology for New Space and polar research, linguistic aspect of intercultural communication.
- Survival in the cold environment.
The 1st week of the School is taking place at Luleå University of Technology, Kiruna Space Campus and includes lectures and workshops. During the week in Kiruna there will be study visits to Esrange Space Center, the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) and EISCAT Scientific Association. The week will also include study visits to Abisko Scientific Research Station, LKAB iron ore mine, ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi. There will be both cultural and social activities.
The learning outcomes are assessed through assignments, workshops and project.
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Critical Space Studies
Teachers
- Claire Cazajous-Augé
- Jens Temmen
Our course “Critical Outer Space Studies: Seminar and Lecture Series” takes as its cue the increasing prevalence and visibility of both public (NASA, ESA, Artemis Accords) and private (SpaceX Blue Origins, etc.) endeavors that seek to explore, exploit, settle, and own outer space and its celestial bodies. Our course will pay particular attention to how, in recent years, the exploration of outer space has been invigorated via its role as a potential remedy for the challenges of the Anthropocene (via resource extractivism, resettlement, off-world heavy industry, observation of impacts of climate change on a global scale).
Using as a point of departure the notion that outer space is a social construct and as such entangled in terrestrial discourses such as colonialism, capitalism, territoriality, militourism, (among others), this class will engage the complex field of study that is the science and exploration of outer space through a variety of disciplinary lenses—particularly, but not exclusively, from the humanities—such as environmentalism, posthuman studies, mobility studies, astroethics, critical legal studies, discard studies, and postcolonial studies.
Participating students will have the unique opportunity to engage with the work of leading scholars and scientists in all of these fields through seminar sessions and their discussion of texts, films, reports and other material. The seminars will also prepare the accompanying guest lecture series, which allow the students to directly engage with leading scholars and scientists from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore the ethics and cultural discourses that surround the exploration of human space.
The course curriculum includes two field trips to HHU Düsseldorf and Université Toulouse -Jean Jaurès for the first and final sessions of class, respectively, which will be fully funded for enrolled students.
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Summer School
Teachers
- Victoria Barabash
- Anna Krukiewicz-Gacek
The main objective of the course is to allow students to acquire knowledge about space resources and mining and create opportunities to gain practical experiences which will help students understand different aspect of space resource exploration against the background of Earth resource exploration.
Lectures will introduce students to different aspects of space exploration, such as geology, sustainable development, and robotics. Students will learn about the geology of various terrestrial bodies and challenges of space exploration. They will also learn about preparing and testing robots used in space missions.
To allow students to see the connections between space geology and space resource exploration and Earth geology and traditional mining, students will take part in educational field trips. The educational trip to the Wieliczka Salt Mine (a UNESCO World Heritage site) is a unique opportunity to see first-hand how the mining industry looked like centuries ago and what it meant to be a miner.
The educational trip to the Racławka Valley and Dubie dolomite mine will help students understand the geological history of planet Earth and learn about different types of rocks and how they were formed first hand.
The school will also be an opportunity to practice communication and collaboration skills in multi-national teams, improve foreign language skills, and brainstorm and reflect on the hard and soft skills of entry-level employees in the space sector. Students will be encouraged to share and reflect on their experiences of inter-cultural communication and experiences of Krakow and places they will have an opportunity to visit. Krakow the former capital of Poland offers unique opportunities to observe and experience shared European history and traditions in the form of architecture, culture and cuisine.
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