Intern in The Space Safety Programme, Planetary Defense Office

Intern in the Space Safety Programme, Planetary Defense Office- **Job Requisition ID**:20051- **Date Posted**:1 November 2025- **Closing Date**:30 November 2025 23:59 CET/CEST- **Publication**:External Only- **Type of Contract**:Intern- **Directorate**:Operations- **Workplace**:Frascati, IT**Location**
ESRIN, Frascati, Italy
** Our team and mission**-
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- The ESA Space Safety Programme Office takes care of all potential hazards from space or in space, which can impact human activities on Earth or again in space. The spectrum of tasks ranges from gathering the basic understanding of space hazards originating from our Sun, from man-made space debris, or from asteroids potentially colliding with the Earth. It also addresses basic approaches to mitigate these hazards and to implement space systems end-to-end in a sustainable and eco-compatible way. Moreover, several corner stone missions are underway to demonstrate basic methods of space weather forecasting, asteroid deflection and active space debris removal from orbit.
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- In execution of these tasks, the Space Safety Office has the following entities:

- Space Weather Office (OPS-SW).
- Planetary Defence Office (OPS-SP).
- Space Debris Office (OPS-SD).
- Clean Space Office (OPS-SC).
- Frequency Management Office (OPS-SF).
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- The Planetary Defence Office (PDO) is addressing the “ prediction and detection [of] the potential impact of a near-Earth object”. Concerning the information needs for NEO monitoring, the following are defined:

- knowledge of the current and future positions of all NEO objects above a given size threshold or risk level, in particular their minimum fly-by distance to the Earth and time of this event.
- maintain awareness of collision risks with the Earth.
- access to verifiable, dependable, timely data with integrity and known accuracy.
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- The top-level Office tasks are:

- issue NEO impact warnings and news releases.
- provide direct access to data in the NEO database.
- provide access to data in the NEO database available only via registration.
- perform additional observations.
- provide high priority information.
- provide educational and outreach material.
- provide user tools.
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- The PDO is structured along three vertical pillars differentiating following activity area:

- observation.
- information provision.
- mitigation.
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- You can see following domains of the department's expertise:

- ground Station Engineering.
- flight Dynamics and Mission Analysis.
- mission Operations Data Systems Engineering.
- navigation Support.
- multi-Mission Infrastructure - Ground Segment Integration and Testing.
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** Field(s) of activity for the internship**-
-** You can choose between the following topics**:
-** Topic 1: NEOCC Weighting Scheme for Orbit Determination**-Orbit determination is the immediate step needed after the discovery or the reobservation of an asteroid. This is typically achieved by gathering all the observations obtained of a given object and reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), and then using them in a dedicated paratemer estimation process meant to determine the orbital elements of the treated object.-In this internship, you will contribute to the development of a methodology for evaluating the quality of asteroid observations used in orbit computation and impact risk analysis. Your main task will be to design and implement a method to evaluate and assign weights to individual optical observations based on their statistical properties. This will involve:
-- analysing the distribution of residuals (differences between observed and computed positions).
- defining rules for assigning weights to different observatories based on performance and data volume.
- exploring different strategies for assigning weights, such as excluding low-quality data and giving more weight to high-confidence observations.
- implementing a procedure to regularly perform this analysis as new data become available.
- assessing how different weighting approaches affect the results of the orbit determination process and, if possible, their influence on impact risk estimates.
- performing tests to measure predictive accuracy by checking how well orbits computed from a short observation time span can reproduce later observations.
-Through this internship, you will gain experience in handling real astronomical data, performing statistical analysis, improving scientific software, and evaluating the effects of observation quality on orbit predictions. You will also become familiar with methods used in planetary defense and the practical challenges of processing observational data for scientific and operational purposes.-
** Topic 2: Radar as a follow-up for NEOMIR imminent impactors discoveries**-
-ESA’s forthcoming NEOMIR spacecraft will watch the Sun-facing sky from the Sun-Earth L1 point and is expected to warn of asteroids 20 m in diameter at least three weeks before Earth impact. Because these objects approach from solar elongations th