Educational goals
The course aims to develop the creative thinking of space and astronautical engineering students through the definition, at an architectural level, of a space mission aimed at specific objectives provided by the teachers. Students will achieve the educational objective in a team work activity by making use of the methodologies, skills, notions and computational tools acquired during the first year of the master's degree. In order to achieve the educational goals, concurrent engineering tools may be used. The activity will end up in the production of a "Concept Document" which will contain the solution proposed by each team to achieve the mission objectives. Assembling the Concept Document will provide the students with the ability to carry out an efficient bibliographic research, aimed at obtaining the required information in the published literature, fact sheets of instrumentation and subsystems, and, if necessary, via a direct request to potential suppliers. The drafting of the "Concept Document" in the standard form of a mission pre-proposal, through the organic presentation of the proposed solution, the selection and detailing of the most important aspects, the highlighting of critical issues, will conclude the group work activity. In summary, the learning objectives of the course can be listed as follows:
development of creative thinking through the definition, at an architectural level, of a space mission aimed at specific objectives;
acquisition of the ability to organize the methodologies, skills, notions and calculation tools acquired during the first year of the master's degree towards the conceptual definition of a space mission, through a team-work activity;
learning how an efficient bibliographic search is carried out, aimed at acquiring information available in the literature, on fact sheets of instriments and subsystems, and direct interaction with potential suppliers;
acquisition of the ability to summarize the work carried out effectively, consistently and concisely, through the writing of a Concept Document.
The Concept Document will offer a creative, yet viable, solution of a central problem of space engineering (the conceptual design of a space mission), starting from the skills all courses of the Astronautical and Space Engineering. This creative project will be carried out in groups, stimulating mutual comparisons and fostering the communication skills of the students.
