You will report to the Head of Mars Orbiting Missions Operations Unit. Your primary tasks will be related to the quantitative monitoring of spacecraft sub-systems behaviour and the analysis of ground station booking results with respect to mission requirements.
You will learn about ground segment spacecraft operations planning processes as well as spacecraft sub-systems, their load profile during operations and their interaction for execution of the mission. The hardware elements with sensitive aging profiles concern most units: solar array and antenna mechanisms, batteries for energy management, gyroscopes and reaction wheels for attitude control, fuel for orbit control, amplifiers for radio-communications etc. The monitoring and characterisation of this aging represents a major part of the work.
To support the various sub-system engineers within the Flight Control Teams, you will be assigned a number of tasks and studies for monitoring and predicting the behaviour of such on-board equipment.
It is expected that you specify and develop software tools that support data analysis and where relevant simulate future usage and aging trade-offs. You may take advantage of existing tools already developed ad-hoc within the flight control teams, or similar tools and approaches on other planetary missions.
Finally, while integrated in the TGO and Mars Express Flight Control Team, you may also participate in tests and simulations related to the upload of a new Spacecraft Central Software and support Mars relay planning activities.
This position will grant you a wide insight into the different aspects of interplanetary spacecraft operations, including spacecraft platform, space communications and ground segment for complex Mars missions.