In February 2012 Malta signed a Cooperation Agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) allowing it to establish a framework for more intensive cooperation in future ESA projects. This introduced the possibility for Maltese graduates to undergo a one-year trainee programme at one of ESA’s establishments, experiencing cutting edge research in a multi-million research organisation. Being one of the first two Maltese to follow such a traineeship at ESA, I feel somewhat compelled to share this enriching experience.

Having a background in electrical engineering and aerospace avionics, this research post landed me at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands – the largest ESA establishment and a hub for European space activities. As a trainee within the Flight Software Systems section most of my work has contributed towards testing Time and Space Partitioning (TSP) for spacecraft onboard software. I was mostly involved with a reference spacecraft mission called Eagle Eye, which is representative of a typical earth observation satellite and used to validate properties of new technologies.

The functional content of spacecraft is rapidly increasing and with this also the complexity of the individual subsystems. The extensive intricacy of integrating varied criticality software has in fact pushed the space industry to using an increasingly federated system architecture where each subsystem has its own processor in the avionics suite. This, however, brings about an increase in power consumption, mass and volume, which are undesirable. In the early 1990s, the aviation industry faced a similar situation which was tackled through the introduction of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA). Having been extensively used across the aviation industry, IMA concepts such as TSP are very appealing to the space sector and ESA has in fact recently funded a number of projects, such as Eagle Eye TSP, that look into the feasibility of TSP for space.

For the past year I have been involved in various integration and testing activities of the Eagle Eye TSP on board software. Guided by an assigned tutor, I was also responsible for the development of a toolset which visualises the status of spacecraft on-board parameters in real-time, showcasing the capabilities of TSP within the space sector. This toolset has been integrated within the Avionics Test Bench at ESTEC and will be utilised to experiment on and demonstrate technologies for future spacecraft avionics.

However, being a trainee at ESA is so much more than simply sitting at a computer for eight hours a day, five times a week. With ESTEC being a research hub for space activities, I was able to attend a number of conferences, training sessions and space-related workshops.  Becoming a member of Young ESA, which is a network for young people working at ESA, I had the opportunity to visit the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany. For astronauts and ground operations personnel, EAC is the training centre for all European built International Space Station (ISS) hardware, as well as for astronaut operations for the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). While at EAC we also had the pleasure to personally meet ESA’s Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen for an exciting Q&A session.

Apart from broadening my technical knowhow through meeting some of the best people in the field, the healthy multi-cultural environment has strengthened my international awareness while broadening my social and technical perspectives. I have been inspired by the passion some people demonstrate on the job and the fulfilment a successful launch brings to the team of engineers behind the spacecraft design campaign. I have learnt that passion, hard work and success usually go hand in hand.

With all this undoubtedly being a very humbling and positive venture I highly encourage other Maltese engineers and scientists to make the most out of such opportunities whenever available. I also appeal to those responsible to invest in creating such openings, potentially bringing expertise and professional connections to the Maltese aerospace sector. This research opportunity was made possible through a Malta Science Scholarship offered by the Ministry of Education and Employment and through an agreement between ESA and the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST).