You are a talented student, preparing your Master’s degree, seeking for a 3 to 6 month internship in space engineering, space enthousiast, technically curious, highly pro-active. Your English is fair at listening, speaking, writing.

We offer Engineer internships for real scientific nanosatellite projects and for techniques developed by CENSUS to support these projects. Apply at stages.census@obspm.fr with a resume in PDF and a motivation letter in PDF presenting 1) your technical interests in one of the topics below, 2) the skills you deem necessary and 3) a few past projects.

• BIRDY, Electronics: A ground demonstration is being developed to mimic the fly-by of an asteroid by a CubeSat performing radio-science at low speed, low altitude. The existing hardware consists of a fixed station and a moving trolley, whose functions are partially tested and must be now integrated altogether. The RF signal is received and repeated with a S-band transponder to be selected, tested and integrated within the existing hardware.

• CASSTOR, System Engineer: This technology demonstrator shall fly a UV spectro-polarimeter to observe the magnetic field of various stars and their vicinity. Supported by CNES’ PASO (advanced projects), the preliminary design of the payload is progressing fast to interface with a nanosatellite platform of 12U or larger, where the system budgets must be established and monitored, with a priority on the thermal and pointing stability to keep a good signal-to-noise ratio.

• NOIRE and PHONE: NOIRE is a large project of a Moon-orbiting swarm of nanosatellites to image the sky in very low radio-frequencies with interferometric measurements. PHONE is a preliminary demonstrator of 1 to 3 CubeSats to test some components and concepts for NOIRE in Low Earth Orbit. The internship will start the system engineering studies for a mission profile of PHONE to pave the way to NOIRE, in close cooperation with the engineers and researchers of NOIRE and PHONE.

• TERACUBE, calibration: The instrumentation in a CubeSat can probe the Venusian atmosphere, a spectacular example of the consequences that a greenhouse effect can have on a planet. The internship consists in a systematic study and a preliminary definition of the calibration scheme of the 600GHz radiometer, in testing and in measurement of the instrument stability with typical Venus flyby environmental changes. Detailed internship description here.

• CENSUS, COTS: We continuously test components at CubeSat scale, from elementary tests to more complex functional chains. Our current focus is a CubeSat camera stimulated by a tablet’s picture on an optical bench and controlled from two kinds of OBC, which requires skills in embedded electronics and on-board software. The goal is to master the control-command chain and to characterize "on board" the image of a simulated star in various conditions.

• CENSUS, ABC: We explore the feasibility of astrometry with CubeSat hardware and, thus, prepare an experiment, accepted to fly on board OPS-SAT, the CubeSat designed and operated by ESA/ESOC. An algorithm is specified, the coding in C++ has started and must be taken over. In parallel, the mission preparation and the post-processing of the results are to be prepared (Matlab/Octave). A theoretical part is also considered to assess the sensitivity of the algorithm in various geometric conditions (linear/non-linear algebra).

• CENSUS, SSOL: Our ground station has been set up for UHF/VHF transmission with satellites in Low Earth Orbit for SATNogs interconnection or direct use. The station was moved and needs a new mechanical mount to be delivered in springtime 2022. We are considering new components (possibly light S-band parabola, with new rotor and controler), but most of the hardware is already procured and operational. The goal is to come back to operations by the end of the internship.

• CENSUS, DOCKS: We develop an open-source software suite, DOCKS (Design & Operation Cross-checking Services), for scientific nanosatellite mission profiles. Intervisibility is a module of DOCKS that computes the eclipses and ground station passes. EPS (Energy Power Simulator) computes the on-board power. The internship is to widen the scope of the Intervisibility module to accept non-Earth centered trajectory files, and to benchmark the EPS module with CNES’ OPALIS software.

All internships are located either in Meudon or in Paris. They are offered with indemnities (public rules apply), restaurant at student rate and 50% Navigo Pass (+conditions apply).

Notes for Engineering schools:

• Paris Observatory is a "research" institution but our projects request "engineers" (as well as researchers). CENSUS presents engineer internships. Unless explicitely mentioned, no theses are offered afterward.
• Conventions are expected to waive any property rights on the results, we thank you for your understanding.

Thank you for your interest!
Boris Segret, CTO of CENSUS