Ahmed Yar Fakhri, Jhonatan Andres Andino Rivera and Mohamedamin Mohamed, all MEng Aerospace Engineering students on the CubeSat Project group supervised by Dr Ranjan Vepa, were accepted onto a prestigious weekend-long workshop with the European Space Agency (ESA).

They submitted their application based on their project titled Project DigiCube Design and Implementation of a Digital Twin for a CubeSat in which they aim to accomplish the generic simulation of a CubeSat Spacecraft system.

The students will attend the ESA CubeSat Concurrent Engineering Workshop at the ESA in Belgium in March and April.

The workshop will expose teams of students to real-life concurrent engineering approach practices while designing a CubeSat mission.

Concurrent engineering is a specific method of simultaneously designing and developing products. Contrary to traditional design methods, in concurrent engineering all subsystems are designed synchronously. This is a far more efficient way of working but comes with its own unique challenge: solutions in one area that could impact the design of another subsystem must be instantly identified and communicated between teams. Although concurrent engineering is a more complex process to begin with, in effect it allows engineering discrepancies to be identified – and rectified – earlier, therefore reducing the overall design time and cost.

Dr Vepa said “it is quite a prestigious event for two of our students to be selected from the group, from across the many ESA member states and associates.”

They follow previous SEMS students who have also been successfully accepted onto the workshop.