Joint European Master in Space Science and Technology
The Joint European Master in Space Science and Technology (or short SpaceMaster) is an Erasmus Mundus 120 ECTS master programme. Currently, the SpaceMaster programme is in its tenth round (started in 2005).
The 6 partner universities throughout Europe are:
- Luleå University of Technology (Sweden Coordinating University)
- University of Würzburg (Germany)
- Cranfield University (England)
- Czech Technical University (Czech Republic)
- Aalto University (Finland)
- Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier (France)
The main objective of the Course is to combine the great diversity of space expertise at six European universities and two Third-Country universities to a common platform of competence within the guidelines of the Bologna process. The educational cooperation is supported by scientific and industrial organisations, thus providing direct contacts with professional research and industry. It also provides to the students a cross-disciplinary extension from laboratory and computer simulation environments to hands-on work with stratospheric balloons, rockets, satellite and radar control, robotics, sensor data fusion, automatic control and multi-body dynamics. The Course brings together students from around the world to share their existing competence in Space Science and Technology and to develop it with Europe's space industry and research community.
The first year of the programme is the same for all the students, starting their first semester in Würzburg, Germany and continuing their second semester in Kiruna, Sweden. For the second year, the students have to select one of the 6 partner universities to study. They will receive two degrees issued from two universities of the consortium, usually one from Luleå University of Technology and another from the selected university for the second year (or Würzburg in case Luleå is chosen). The program is supported by the European Space Agency.
In 2010 both the University of Tokyo (UT), Japan and the Utah State University (USU), USA have joined the consortium as full partners.[1]
This programme is also taking part in the Erasmus Mundus Action 3 Program which led to the creation of the SpaceMaster Global Partnership. This framework allows EU students to do part of their thesis or project work at one of the following partner universities :
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), China
- Stanford University (SU), USA
- University of Toronto (UT), Canada
An alumni programme is currently still in the planning stages. The consortium also organizes outreach activities and events such as the Planetary rover symposium, held in 2009 at the Espoo campus at the Aalto University in Finland, where leading space robotics scientists gave presentations on history, status and technologies of planetary robotics. Invited guest speakers included Mr. Alexei Bogatchev (Russia), Mr. Gianfranco Visentin (ESA), Dr. Richard Volpe (JPL), and Dr. Juha Röning (University of Oulu).[2]
In 2008 the SpaceMaster Robotics Team was created by Juxi Leitner and David Leal to organize and participate in various student robotics competitions. Their first project was flown on a stratospheric research balloon in the USA and in 2009 they participated in the BEXUS campaign of the European Space Agency.[3]