Internship / Orbit propagation on-board satellites (m/f)

Description de l'offre

Internship / Orbit propagation on-board satellites (m/f)

Airbus Defence & Space Toulouse (ex Astrium SL)

Airbus Defence and Space is a division of Airbus Group, formed by combining the business activities of Cassidian, Astrium and Airbus Military. This new division is the leading aerospace and defence company in Europe, it represents the second largest company in the space field and is among the ten best international defence companies. It employs some 40,000 people and records a turnover of approximately 14 billion euros per year.

Airbus Group is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2015, the Group - comprising Airbus, Airbus Defence and Space and Airbus Helicopters - generated revenues of € 64.5 billion and employed a workforce of around 136,600.

Our people work with passion and determination to make the world a more connected, safer and smarter place. Taking pride in our work, we draw on each other's expertise and experience to achieve excellence. Our diversity and teamwork culture propel us to accomplish the extraordinary - on the ground, in the sky and in space.

Description of the job

Airbus Defence and Space (Toulouse) is looking for an intern for a 6 month internship.

The systematic use of GPS receivers on-board low Earth orbit satellites allows an estimation of their position and velocity with a given accuracy. To improve satellite autonomy and to reduce interactions with the ground segment it becomes necessary to predict on-board the satellite trajectory in a near future, from few orbits up to a few days.

This internship will start on 1 st March 2017 (subject to some flexibility).

Internships at Airbus Group

Profil recherché

Tasks & accountabilities

First of all, you will have to make a benchmarking of the various types of orbit propagators (numerical, analytical, etc) in a context of limited resources on-board.
Then, you will have to develop a propagator adapted to the requested performances in terms of accuracy and computation efficiency, by adjusting the level of orbital perturbations while estimating the errors on position and velocity over the time.

Finally, you will have to include in the propagation the orbital maneuvers that the satellite will have to perform during the next orbits, taking into account thrust uncertainties.
The training course will take place in the department AOCS/GNC & Flight Dynamics Studies, within the Flight Dynamics team working on mission analysis, developments of operational orbitography software and transfer operations for telecommunications satellites and low Earth orbit satellites.

Required skills

You are in the 2nd year of a master's or the 5th year of engineering school, university or equivalent specializing in Engineering / Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering.

You ideally have an initial experience in this domain.

You have knowledge of:

·  Satellite trajectory, orbital mechanics,
·  Data processing : Matlab/Scilab, Java.

You are a strong team player and have excellent interpersonal skills.

English: negotiation level,
French: negotiation level.