Space Mission Design in Berlin

Hi, I’m Sabrina Ferro and I am a 4th year Civil Structural Engineering and BCII student who recently participated in a virtual internship at the Technical University of Berlin. The internship is called Space Mission Design, where a group of students from different places around the world gather as a team to design and manage a satellite mission.

Everyone gave an initial space mission statement and only one was voted to be chosen to continue in the design process. The space mission we chose was called Emergency Net, which is a satellite that detects natural disasters and sends this information to the nearest ground station, thus providing response teams with the info they need to plan out which areas are in the most need. This all adds up to satellite technology being a vital component to the present and future of disaster relief efforts. I loved the virtual global short program course lectures. The teacher, Manuel, originally from Spain, was passionate and had excellent field knowledge and experience. All the students in my class were from other countries which made teamwork activities much more interesting, as we contributed to our different space mission subsystems.

The final assessment was a presentation on your substructures. I enjoyed learning about an entirely new field of engineering. It opened my eyes to new possibilities I could pursue when finishing my Bachelor’s degree, such as space engineering. Perhaps structural and mechanisms of satellites or electrical propulsion systems of satellites since those were the primary work packages in my Space Mission Design subject.

Sabrina Ferro

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation

Global Short Program Student