ESA Graduate Trainee in Scientific Simulation Development (NewAthena)

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.

NewAthena is a future X-ray observatory of ESA, planned to be launched in the second half of 2030. It features an unprecedented combination of collecting area, survey capabilities and energy resolution. Most of the observing time will be allocated through peer-reviewed proposals open to the whole astronomical community worldwide. It enables unprecedented studies of a wide range of astronomical phenomena. These include distant gamma-ray bursts, the hot gas found in the space around clusters of galaxies, accreting compact objects such as black holes over their whole mass range and neutron stars, supernova explosion and remnants, stars, white dwarfs, exoplanets and their parent stars, Jupiter's auroras and comets in our own Solar System, and the interstellar medium (gas and dust). You may find a concise description of NewAthena at the following web page: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/athena/about-athena. 

NewAthena is in a “Study Phase”. A dynamic and diverse team of engineers and scientists at ESTEC is responsible for the design of the spacecraft, the mirror and the focal plane, as well as for the specification of the science case of the mission, in collaboration with large international teams responsible for the two instruments, and the International Partner Space Agencies: JAXA and NASA.

You are encouraged to visit the ESA website: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity/research for the traineeship

You will work in collaboration with the NewAthena Study Scientist and Telescope Calibration Scientist to create an “end-to-end” simulation tool of the scientific performance of NewAthena. This tool will combine two existing elements:
 

• An analytic simulator of the performance of the NewAthena mirror, developed by the cosine enterprise located at Warmond (The Netherlands). This simulator enables accurate and reliable predictions of the telescope “Effective area” (the collecting power to incoming sky photons) and of the “Point Spread Function”, the response in the spatial domain to a point-like monochromatic source, both as a function of energy and position in the sky within the telescope field-of-view
   

• The SIimulator for X-Ray TElescopes package (Dauser et al., 2019, 630, A66). SIXTE is a software package enabling instrument performance analyses and mission experiment scientific simulation, using X-ray sources described in a detector-independent format. SIXTE fully supports the NewAthena scientific payload

Your first task will be to integrate the mirror responses produced by the cosine tool into SIXTE. This will lead to the creation of the first state-of-the-art full NewAthena simulation chain, from the X-ray photons in the sky to the detection of individual events on the NewAthena focal plane and the generation of spectra, images, and light curves. This activity is expected to be completed between four and six months after the start of the internship. This time span includes the validation of the software, and the preparation of an internal report for the ESA Study Team. This tool will play a key role in the preparation of the scientific documentation for the definition of the mission, the so called “Adoption process”.

In the second half of the internship, you will use the aforementioned simulation tool to predict the results of experiments with NewAthena. You will contribute to the optimization the mission profile and/or to “trade-offs” among alternative configurations. Examples of this activity could be: the definition of the mission survey strategy – a set of logically concatenated observations with the Wide Field Imager aiming at accumulating a large sample (~105) of newly detected X-ray sources; the analysis of the science impact that different mirror configurations may yield on the spectroscopic capabilities of the X-Ray Integral Field Unit instrument, in particular with respect to the study of the intra-cluster plasma in clusters of galaxies and of sub-relativistic, ionized outflows ejected by accreting super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies; or the optimal spacecraft strategy to “scan” contiguous regions of the sky, among others. You will be given the opportunity to complete these activities with a scientific publication on a main astronomy refereed journal within the completion of the internship.

Technical competencies

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation

Operational Efficiency

Fostering Cooperation

Relationship Management

Continuous Improvement

Forward Thinking

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

Education

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

Additional requirements

You should have good interpersonal and communication skills and should be able to work in a multicultural environment, both independently and as part of a team. Previous experience of working in international teams can be considered an asset. Your motivation, overall professional perspective and career goals will also be explored during the later stages of the selection process. 

No specific technical scientific requirements for this post. Knowledge of a commonly used scientific programming languages (e.g., python or IDL) is an asset.