The purpose of the Summer School is to foster the practical application of knowledge derived from lectures, to develop organisational and team-work skills and to encourage creativity. Teams will compete to design the best project, judged by an independent jury. The teams themselves are responsible for the selection of the subject of the project and for the team structure and working methods.

Prospective Summer school students will meet great challenges, such as in real life. These include 20-hour working days (before proposal submittal), sudden immersion into new fields and techniques, as well as the difficulties of forming and working together as a team, with scientists listening to engineers and engineers listening to scientists. However, on day ten, the reward will be a proposal for a unique space mission.

The objectives

• motivating participants to seeing space as an exciting and challenging endeavour
• working in international, multi-disciplinary teams by posing challenging topics for designing space missions
• teach a range of scientific topics relevant to the range of possible science missions to design, and to teach about the different aspects of the complex interplay between scientific objectives and requirements on the one hand, mission- and spacecraft design as well as mission costing on the other hand
• to develop the ability to work in teams for a common end, to prepare presentations and reports under serious time constraints
• to enjoy the "Alpbach experience" that is quite unique