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Politecnico di Torino COREP

Programme

The overall duration of the SEEDS Master Course is 14-15 months for a total amount of 1750 hours (including homework) and 90 European credits Transfer System (ECTS) points. 


It will start in November 2008 and will be concluded in December 2009.


The first 6 months (about 704 hours) will be spent either at Politecnico di Torino (SEEDS programme) or at ISAE-Supaero (TAS-Astro programme) and will mainly consist of class lectures and exercises providing the general foundations of the various disciplines related to Space Exploration. Visits to National or European facilities as well as conferences and lectures of distinguished personalities are foreseen throughout this phase. The planned average class attendance is almost 32 hours/week.

Learning assessments on all subjects are foreseen in each SEEDS site at the end of any lecture phase, possibly grouped to homogeneous clusters to be evaluated as a whole.


In the following 9 months (about 1000 hours) the students approach the future Project Work Activities. Then they extensively develop the SEEDS Project Work under the guide of experienced senior tutors. Thanks to its extension this Project Work is one of the main characteristic features of SEEDS. It is divided into three phases, each one dedicated to a special aspect of the space exploration. A specific theme is identified every year (e.g. the preliminary design of a lunar outpost and that of a lunar permanent basis have been the themes of the first two SEEDS editions). The Project Work is divided into three phases, each one lasting about two months and dedicated to a specific aspect of the selected theme, taking also into account the locally available dominating competences. The three phases are hosted in a temporal sequence by universities, industries and centres of the associated European towns. During the whole Project Work students are grouped together and work in cross-national teams. The Project Work itself is an advanced and ambitious activity, intended to lead to scientific reports to be diffused worldwide in the space community. The activities performed during the 2006 and 2007 Project Works are described in Executive Summary 2006 and Executive Summary 2007 respectively.


Course attendance is mandatory and implies full time engagement from Monday to Friday (9.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00). The average class workload is almost 36 hours/week.


The course working language will be English. 


The SEEDS structure displays only slight differences among the teaching activities in associated sites. Subjects studied in Torino are: