LDE Space Challenge, 2024-2025 - Studiegids

Dit vak wordt alleen in het Engels aangeboden.

Admission requirements

This course is part of the LDE Space & Society Honours Programme (Leiden-Delft-Erasmus) and is therefore only open to students that are enrolled in this programme.

Topics

Space disciplines' fundamentals and interactions, interdisciplinary system thinking, space for society

Disciplines

Space Law
Space Governance
Space Engineering
Earth Observation & Geosciences
Astronomy
Space Business & Innovation

Skills

Researching
Analysing
Generating Solutions
Project-based working
Collaborating
Oral communication
Written communication
Presenting
Societal & Interdisciplinary awareness
Reflecting
Resilience

Number of students

Minimum of 24 and maximum 45.

Description

In this challenge, you will work in a small, interdisciplinary team of students (6) on real-life interdisciplinary space challenges. These challenges will address problems faced by the space sector in current and future space activities, and/or challenges for which the space sector requires an immediate solution.

An example of such a challenge could be to develop solutions to handle space debris that is currently becoming a bigger threat for future space activities. Another example could be to draft a plan for international exploration of the Moon or Mars. A final example could be to create a business plan for monitoring climate change mitigations from space.

You will learn to use knowledge provided in the lectures to have a multi- and interdisciplinary approach for investigating and addressing the challenge. This approach will help you develop novel and implementable solutions to challenges.

A good outcome would be a clear iterative improvement in addressing the challenge whereby groups continually develop their understanding of the problem (from different scientific perspectives including the disciplines above) and challenge themselves to broaden the solution space. In terms of outputs a good result would be the provision of new approaches and prototypes of solutions to stakeholders in addressing the problems they face.

Course objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

Work effectively in an interdisciplinary team of students.
Analyse a space sector problem or challenge from multiple perspectives.
Identify relevant key aspects and interactions from those introduced in the Space Fundamentals & Interactions course and apply these in a concrete challenge.
Combine insights from different disciplines to substantiate designs of solutions.
Present research and solutions effectively, both in oral and written form.

Programme and timetable

Meetings will be organized on Wednesdays, will begin at 19:00 and run for 2 hours. The programme will include meetings of the following types:

face to face coordination meetings with the rest of your group,
group supervision meetings with course instructors,
progress meetings presenting and giving feedback to other groups with:
- Problem Statement review
- Mid Term Review
- Final Review
Meetings with regional stakeholders at a frequency depending on availability and the specific challenge
Public presentation day to sector, friends & family

Dates - Wednesdays 19:00 - 21:00
Locations will alternate between 3 locations (Leiden (The Hague), Delft & Erasmus)), so be prepared to travel for sessions.

Reading list

Readings will be directed in relation to the challenges undertaken and literature will be announced in class or via Brightspace.

Course load and teaching method

This course is worth 8 ECTS, which means the total course load equals 224 hours:

10 Project session divided over 13 weeks of = 2 hours weekly (participation is mandatory)
Review Sessions:
- Problem Statement review: 4 hours
- Mid Term Review: 2 hours
- Final Review: 2 hours
Practical work: 10 hours/week
Final Public presentation 4 hours

Assessment methods

The assessment methods is with a grade, based on the following:

Participation assessed continually through participation in seminars
Final presentation (team grade)
Personal evaluation

Brightspace

The Brightspace environment of Leiden University will be used in this course. Students will be enrolled to the Brightspace module by the organisation of the course.

Registration process

To participate in this course, you need to apply for the LDE Space & Society Honours Programme. The application for 2024-2025 is open from 2 September (9:00 hrs) until 6 October (22:00 hrs) through the Honours Academy of Leiden University. The application form will be published on their student website.

Please note: it is not possible to follow (part of) this programme online.
Please note: students are not required to register through uSis for this course. Your registration will be done centrally.
Please note for Delft students: Interested TU Delft students should first have been selected as Honours Programme Bachelor (HPB) students by their respective faculty. Only HPB students are eligible to register for this programme.

Contact

Programme coordinator: Peter Batenburg LDESpaceSocietyHonours@ha.leidenuniv.nl.