Implementation of Concurrent Engineering in MUSE (Master in Space Systems) Master's degree in space engineering

Abstract

In September 2017, the second-year students of the Master’s Degree in Space Systems (MUSE) from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) had the opportunity to participate in the 1st ESA Academy Concurrent Engineering Challenge, organized by ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre, together with Politecnico Di Torino (Italy), University of Strathclyde (United Kingdom) and ESA Academy (Belgium) students. The four-day challenge was focused on the Phase-0 design of a space mission fully developed based on a Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach. The UPM team design was conducted within the Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) of the Instituto Universitario de Microgravedad ‘Ignacio Da Riva’ (IDR/UPM), located in Madrid, by the supervision of two UPM Professors acting as System Engineers of the sessions. From the academic point of view, this experience was integrated within MUSE’s program as Study Case II. MUSE is promoted, implemented and fully organized by IDR/UPM, and it is based on Project Based Learning, taking advantage of the wide expertise of IDR/UPM on space research and technology. The educational program is focused on practical work within real space engineering projects of IDR/UPM and by collaboration with several space scientific institutions.
The aim of this work is to present the academic possibilities of the IDR/UPM CDF. Besides, the ESA Challenge structure and the mission developed by MUSE students is also described, as well as the future challenges proposed to integrate CE within MUSE’s educational program.