Esa Graduate Trainee in Scientific Analysis Methods for The Smile Mission

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Client :

European Space Agency

Location :

Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain

Job Category : Other

EU work permit required :

Job Reference :

142537482090787635232460

Job Views : Posted :

31.03.2025

Expiry Date : 15.05.2025

Job Description :

ESA Graduate Trainee in Scientific Analysis Methods for the SMILE mission

Job Requisition ID : 19288

Date Posted : 1 February 2025

Closing Date : 28 February 2025 23 : 59 CET / CEST

Type of Contract : ESA Graduate Trainee

Directorate : Science

Workplace : Villanueva de la Cañada, ES

Grade Band : F1 - F1

Our team and mission : ESA maintains a world-leading Science Programme with missions in heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics and fundamental physics. Its mission is to 'Empower Europe to lead space science'. The Department for Science Operations and Office for Science Engagement and Oversight host together the scientists and engineers that oversee the space missions, from study to end of operations. It defines and develops the science operation systems for the missions and operates the missions in space, as well as archiving and curating their data during operations and beyond. Our main objective is to maximise the scientific output of ESA's space science missions for the benefit of humankind.

The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences that is expected to launch during the traineeship. This heliophysics mission, with its diverse international community of scientists, is dedicated to measuring the response of the Earth’s magnetosphere - ionosphere system to changes in the conditions of the solar wind, the continuous but variable flow of plasma and magnetic field that fills the heliosphere. These interactions are important scientifically, but also in influencing how the space environment interacts with our society and technology. SMILE will fulfil its mission by making a combination of in situ measurements of the magnetic field and ions close to the spacecraft, remote sensing measurements of the aurora in ultraviolet, and, for the first time, by imaging the boundary of the magnetosphere, the magnetopause and the cusp regions, using X-Rays.

The ESA Science Operations Centre for the SMILE mission is located at the European Space Astronomy Centre near Madrid, Spain, and is responsible for receiving and validating the scientific data from the mission. We will make it available to the public worldwide via the ESA HelioPhysics Archive, part of the ESAC Science Data Centre, in a way that makes the data as easy to use as possible, and so maximise the scientific return of the mission.

Field(s) of activity / research for the traineeship :

You will join the SMILE Science Operations Centre team as the final preparations for launch and first operations of the mission are taking place. You will be responsible for defining, together with the international SMILE community, and then creating data analysis tools for users of the ESA HelioPhysics Archive or HPA. The target audience for the tools are scientists who are not already familiar with the SMILE mission nor part of the SMILE consortium. The goal is to help them get started with the SMILE data, and so answer their research questions as easily as possible. This is important because of the novel nature of the SMILE X-ray data in particular. You will make use of the state-of-the-art ESA Datalabs platform which is being actively developed to enable ever more complex scientific analysis of our growing and world-leading datasets.

Your tasks will include :

• Learning about and understanding the SMILE instruments, data products, their capabilities and uses.
• Working with the international SMILE consortium to identify the needs for data analysis tools.
• Implementing those tools on the ESA Datalabs platform, probably as Jupyter notebooks using Python.
• Before the start of science operations, testing the tools using simulated data.
• After the start of science operations modifying the tools based on the true performance of the instruments and any changes in data products.
• Assessing to what extent the tools could be modified or designed to support education and public activities focused on the SMILE mission, or heliophysics in general.
• Investigating how the SMILE data might additionally be used in an astrophysical context, interacting with the astrophysics archive teams.

Technical competencies :

Behavioural competencies :

For more information, please refer to ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook.

Education :

You should have recently completed or be in the final year of your master’s degree in computer science, physics, space science or astrophysics.

Additional requirements :

You should have good interpersonal and communication skills.

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