International Space University

• A twelve-month Master of Science in Space Studies (MSS)
• A two-month Space Studies Program (SSP)
• A five-week Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Studies Program (SHSSP)
• A one-week Executive Space Course (ESC) providing a basic introduction to space topics for corporates executives.

• Professional Development Programs
• Workshops
• Short Courses
• Forums

Participation in these programs is open to individuals and institutions of all nationalities.

The Master of Science in Space Studies (MSS) and the Master of Science in Space Management (MSM) are graduate-level degree programs in the space field. These one-year degree programs include a three-month professional internship and several professional visits. The main elements of the Masters are:[15]

• Lectures covering all major disciplines related to space, with corresponding workshops and roundtables,
• Lectures on contemporary space-related issues and events which as a whole provide an interdisciplinary and intercultural education,
• Team Projects involving most, if not all, of those disciplines (see Table below),
• Individual Projects performed during the academic year and during an internship period,
• Professional Visits and participation to ISU Annual Symposium,
• Specific skills training.

The Space Studies Program (SSP) is an intense two-month course for postgraduate students and professionals of all disciplines. The curriculum covers the principal space related fields, both non-technical and technical and ranges from policy and law, business and management and humanities to life sciences, engineering, physical sciences and space applications. The shared experience of an international, interactive working environment is an ideal networking forum leading to the creation of an extensive, international, multidisciplinary professional network.

Each year the SSP convenes in a different location around the world. The SSP curriculum includes:

• Core Lectures covering fundamental concepts across all relevant disciplines,
• Theme days presenting keys/issues of space with an interdisciplinary approach,
• Hands-on workshops providing practical applications of the concepts presented in the lectures,
• Departmental Activities of the seven SSP departments providing in-depth lectures & workshops, professional visits, and individual research projects,
• Team Projects in which the SSP participants address a relevant space topic as an international, interdisciplinary, and intercultural team.

Future Space Studies Programs

Future Space Studies programs are planned for:[47]

• 2020: Postponed to 2021 in Granada. An online experience is offered during the summer of 2020: the Interactive Space Program (ISP).
• 2021: Granada, Spain.
• 2023: São José dos Campos, Brazil.[48]

Past Space Studies Programs, Locations and Team Projects

The Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Program (SH-SSP) is a five weeks course open to undergraduate students and professionals of all disciplines with space interest. As in all ISU programs, the curriculum covers not only space-related fields and space applications but also non-technical fields such as policy, law, space business, and management techniques.

The intention of a second program, next to the established SSP program of ISU, was to extend the offering to participants of the Southern Hemisphere, in line with the local summer holidays, but participants from all nations are welcomed.

The program is offered in partnership with the University of South Australia in Adelaide (Mawson Lakes Campus) and benefits from scholarship support from the Australian Space Research Program. The intention is to have the program iterating to different locations in the Southern Hemisphere, in particular in Africa and South America, but regularly returning to Australia.

Previous White Paper executive summaries and full reports are available for download from the ISU Library.

The Executive Space Course (ESC) provides an overview of space and of space-related subjects for professionals of diverse backgrounds, including marketing, finance, law, and contract management, intended to improve their communication with technical colleagues.

Since 1995, the collection of the ISU Library has grown to reach about 9,000 space-related documents. The collection supports the interdisciplinary aspects of the courses and includes subjects like space-related business and management, space policy and law, international cooperation, remote sensing and Earth observation, telecommunication, space engineering, space mission design, astronomy, space life sciences, and space medicine. The Library also features news about space, information from space agencies and research institutes around the world, and awareness and alerting services from journals. RSS feeds can be used to follow the library's new acquisitions. Interested people may subscribe to the feeds for receiving regular updates about books, electronic documents, or Team Projects reports that are added to the online catalog.[112]

With the strong support from ESA, the following facilities were installed and put into operation:

Several optical and radio telescopes at ISU give students the opportunity of performing observations as well as the necessary analysis, which introduces them to typical techniques of astrophysical research and gives them a first-hand experience in the study of the invisible Universe.

The satellite television Ku band (10–12 GHz) is suitable to perform observations of the Sun and the Moon, using conventional material, such as a 1.2-meter parabolic dish, placed on the roof of the ISU building. This telescope, developed under ESA contract by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Dresden for use in schools, has been given to ISU by ESA. It is capable of providing properly calibrated data and hence allows to determine the surface temperatures of the Sun and the Moon. Since its in-depth testing by ISU Masters students, it has been extensively used in the framework of workshops and individual student projects. With the ESA-Dresden Radio Telescope, the students can experience and perform all the necessary steps from observation, calibration, and data reduction to the interpretation and evaluation of the results.

The Haystack Observatory, run by MIT, developed a Small Radio Telescope (SRT) for educational purposes, consisting of a 2.3-meter diameter standard satellite dish antenna. This radio telescope operates at a 1.42  GHz frequency (21-cm wavelength) where hydrogen atoms emit a strong spectral line. This allows radio astronomers to detect hydrogen, the most abundant element of the Universe. One SRT has been donated to ISU by ESA and is operational since 2009. This new asset, named the ESA-Haystack Radio Telescope, provides the students with the opportunity of performing observations of astronomical objects even outside the Solar System.

When the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) acquired a new Concurrent Design Facility, its initial CDF was set up at the ISU Central Campus in 2008. The CDF brings the Masters's students the possibility of familiarizing themselves with concurrent engineering and its application processes through workshops and assignments. These hands-on activities always have double-oriented tasks, by combining the CDF process with the development of space-related topics. As the usefulness of concurrent engineering extends much further than space mission design, the use of the ISU CDF for design processes in other industry fields than space is also under consideration.

A fully automated satellite tracking station is installed at ISU since 2008. This ground station provides several hands-on training opportunities for the Masters' students, as satellite communication is now a reality at ISU. The ISU Tracking Ground Station was built in the scope of the Global Educational Network for Satellite Operations (GENSO) project, an endeavor involving students worldwide and promoted by the International Space Education Board (ISEB), an organization including the educational departments of some of the major space agencies worldwide.

Established in 2009, the ISU Human Spaceflight Laboratory includes a rotating chair, the training model of the ultrasound echocardiograph, and body motion analysis equipment that flew on Mir in 1988, and the flight model of the neuroscience Pocket equipment that flew on the Space Shuttle STS-51G mission. This equipment was all donated by CNES. In addition, NASA has loaned a training model of the ISS Advanced Life Support Pack (ALSP) and ESA has loaned a training model of the ISS 3DSPACE experiment. The Human Spaceflight Laboratory is also equipped with a clinostat, an autoclave, a laminar flow cabinet, microscopes, medical diagnosis and surgery tools, and other laboratory equipment to provide realistic hands-on training on the experiments performed in space by astronauts.

The goal of the Self Deployable Habitat for Extreme Environments (SHEE) is to develop a deployable space analog habitat demonstrating technologies and architecture that may one day be used in extreme environment habitats on the Earth, Moon, and Mars. This project is a partnership between seven different companies and institutions representing five different European nations. This habitat is designed to support two "astronauts" for missions of up to two weeks in duration. Construction was completed in July 2015, after which the SHEE was shipped to ISU for validation and testing. ISU faculty and students will spend the next six months evaluating the habitat and delivering a report on their findings to the European Commission. The SHEE will live in the ISU High Bay until April 2016 when it will take part in a Mars Analog mission called Moonwalk in Rio Tinto, Spain.

• Peter Diamandis
• Todd B. Hawley
• Robert D. Richards

• 1987–2004: Arthur C. Clarke
• 2004–2015: Jean-Jacques Dordain
• 2015–2018: Buzz Aldrin[6]
• 2018–present: Pascale Ehrenfreund

• 1991–1994: George Van Reeth
• 1994–1998: Roland Doré
• 1998–2004: Karl Doetsch
• 2004–2011: Michael Simpson
• 2011–2018: Walter Peeters
• 2018–2021: Juan De Dalmau
• 2021-present: Pascale Ehrenfreund

• Ben Finney, 1994-2003 co-chair of Space and Society department
• Dustin Bates, 2006 ISU Summer Session Program Teaching Associate

• Oleg Atkov, Russian Railways, Faculty
• James H. Newman, NASA, the first ISU alumnus (SSP 1989) to go into space
• Jeffrey Hoffman, NASA & MIT, Faculty
• Chiaki Mukai, JAXA, Faculty
• Reinhold Ewald, ESA, lecturer
• Jean-Jacques Favier, CNES, lecturer
• Robert Thirsk, CSA, lecturer
• Soyeon Yi, KARI, lecturer, the first astronaut to attend ISU (SSP 2009)
• Anousheh Ansari, the first person to receive an ISU honorary doctorate while in space
• Sergei Krikalev, Energya, Special Guest Lecturer
• Yang Liwei, CASC, Special Guest Lecturer
• Michel Tognini, CNES & ESA, Special Guest Lecturer
• Jessica Meir, NASA, alumna (MSS 2000)[121]