With its various digital education programs, ISU is committed to reach and provide education to every person with internet access on the planet. These programs are designed to be fully synchronous and highly interactive, where the participants are challenged to work in distributed teams and across time zones, similar to how humanity might work in the future with diverse groups on Earth, in orbit, on the Moon, Mars and in interplanetary Space. As of today, ISU has two online programs in its portfolio: Space Studies Program - Online Edition (SSP-Online) and Interactive Space Program (ISP).Participants will learn about all disciplines linked to space and will conduct teamwork similar to that of a Space Analog where crew members, mission control, scientists and experts collaborate remotely in an intense mode.
ISP will prepare participants (“the crew”) well for the challenges of producing quality work in a distributed environment such as teams on the Earth, orbit, Moon, Mars and interplanetary space.
The Team’s Mission will be to produce an influential report and a presentation on how space can help in the monitoring, mitigation as well as the prevention & preparedness of pandemics.
To better simulate human space missions running across different time zones, the ISP operations will be conducted based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). A typical day at ISP will start with a Daily Seminar at 07:30 UTC (1,5 hours including Q&A), and will continue with a Team Mission session for individual work, small-group discussion or mentoring (at least 2 hours), followed by an All-Hands session (1 hour). The afternoon activities will include an Interactive Workshop (2,5 hours) and conclude at 17:00 UTC.
The Daily Briefs will help analyse space from a multidisciplinary perspective covering policy, economics, law and regulations, business and management, science, engineering, satellite applications, human performance in space and the contribution of the humanities.
The Interactive Workshops will deal with practical aspects of space: remote sensing applications, satellite and communications technology; artificial intelligence; telehealth/telemedicine, space technology transfer, business and entrepreneurship, ethics, policy, regulatory frameworks and international collaboration at government, research and corporate level.
The Team Mission work will allow for individual, small-group and full-crew work with mentors on literature survey, analysis, discussion, converging to conclusion and recommendations and preparation of the final deliveries.
The daily hand-over sessions will have a flexible format and can include cross-habitat meetings, Team Mission work handovers, social interaction, or important announcements from Mission Control at ISU’s Central Campus in Strasbourg.
The team of mentors will include more than one hundred ISU faculty and alumni from all disciplines, active in academia, government agencies and companies from around the world.
Upon successful completion of the academic requirements, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion from ISU and will be eligible for discount to enroll in other – face to face – ISU programs such as the Master of Space Studies (MSS) and the Space Studies Programs (SSP and SHSSP).
