Youth Works Hub lists 24 ESA internships in Darmstadt, Germany for 2026, all with the same 30 November 2026 deadline. The European Space Agency (ESA) calls in this batch are for university students, with most aimed at or preferring Master's level, and each runs for 3 to 6 months in teams such as mission operations, flight dynamics, space safety, ground systems engineering and communication.
According to Youth Works Hub's review of the 24 calls, the topics include flight control teams for JUICE, Solar Orbiter, ExoMars and XMM-Newton as well as AI, security engineering, space debris and space weather. If you are weighing your options, it helps to know the difference between a fellowship and an internship and how we verify opportunities before you apply.
A few calls that stand out:
🇩🇪 Germany: The JUICE Flight Control Team intern works with the team of the mission heading to Jupiter's icy moons.
🇩🇪 Germany: The ExoMars Time Correlation intern investigates why the link between the spacecraft clock and ground time drifts on two orbiters circling Mars.
🇩🇪 Germany: The Lunar Image Super-Resolution intern develops methods for higher resolution imagery of the Moon's surface.
🇩🇪 Germany: The Space Debris Office intern supports the Zero Debris Approach in Darmstadt or Noordwijk.
🇩🇪 Germany: The Disruption Tolerant Networking intern tests the technology behind a future Solar System Internet.
🇩🇪 Germany: The AI, Data & Digital Twins intern chooses from four topics at the crossroads of AI and space operations.
🇩🇪 Germany: The Mission Analysis Section intern builds a trajectory optimisation framework for the Comet Interceptor mission.
🇩🇪 Germany: The Digital Content and Outreach intern helps make articles and information sheets more engaging and reviews translated content.
Every internship in this batch lasts 3 to 6 months, and all 24 are based in Darmstadt, with the Space Debris Office call listing Darmstadt or Noordwijk. Depending on the call, applicants from 27 or 31 countries are eligible, and the full country list is on each listing page.
📅 Deadlines: 30 Nov (24) 🌍 Countries: 🇩🇪 Germany (24)
In This Batch
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
- 📅 30 Nov · 🇩🇪 Germany · Internship
What's in this batch:
24 Internships · 1 Country
💼 Internships & Traineeships
1. 🇩🇪 Solar Orbiter Mission Planning System Automation Intern 🛰️ ESA Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🚀
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 Master's students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Solar Orbiter Mission Planning System Automation internship places you with the Solar Orbiter flight control team in Darmstadt to automate weekly mission planning. Interns extend the existing automation system and help validate and deploy new features for operational use, and the role is open to Master's students with Python and Linux/Bash scripting skills.
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2. 🇩🇪 XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL Mission Operations 🛰️ European Space Agency (ESA) Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🔭
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, ideally at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL Mission Operations internship joins the flight control team behind an X-ray observatory and a gamma-ray observatory in Darmstadt. You will help develop a real-time awareness system that gives engineers an overview of spacecraft, ground segment and mission status, and good Python skills and familiarity with web technologies are needed.
3. 🇩🇪 ExoMars Time Correlation Evolution Data Analysis 🛰️ ESA Mission Operations Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 📊
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The ExoMars Time Correlation Evolution Data Analysis internship puts you in the flight control team behind two orbiters circling Mars, investigating why the link between the spacecraft clock and ground time drifts. It suits university students who want to dig into spacecraft data and learn how to analyse, visualise and interpret it.
4. 🇩🇪 Mission Operations Department Deep Space and External Services Section Intern 📡 European Space Agency (ESA) Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in a Master's course · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Mission Operations Department Deep Space and External Services Section internship places university students in an experimental operations team in Darmstadt. You choose between two topics: digital intermediate frequency interoperability or ground station interface harmonisation, and learn how to configure software defined radios.
5. 🇩🇪 Spacecraft Operations Intern, Astrophysics Missions Division 🛰️ ESA Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🔭
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in the final or second-to-last Master's year · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Spacecraft Operations internship in the Astrophysics Missions Division joins the Flight Control Team of an ESA planet-hunting mission preparing for launch. You will help build a framework for routine spacecraft monitoring and reporting, and a computer science, software or data background is an asset.
6. 🇩🇪 JUICE Flight Control Team Intern 🚀 ESA Mission Operations Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🪐
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The JUICE Flight Control Team internship lets university students work with the flight control team of JUICE, the mission heading to Jupiter's icy moons. You can choose between improving the mission planning system or developing telemetry monitoring tools.
7. 🇩🇪 Flight Dynamics Division Science Mission Support Section Intern 🛰️ ESA Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🌌
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Flight Dynamics Division Science Mission Support Section internship tests whether space weather data can make the tracking of interplanetary spacecraft more accurate. You will work with interplanetary plasma data to improve deep-space orbit determination.
8. 🇩🇪 Global Interplanetary Trajectory Optimisation Intern 🚀 ESA Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, ideally at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Global Interplanetary Trajectory Optimisation internship helps improve a software framework for interplanetary trajectory design, with a focus on global optimisation methods and GPU acceleration. You need a solid background in applied mathematics, physics or aerospace engineering and good Python skills, and GPU programming knowledge is an asset.
9. 🇩🇪 Mission Analysis Section Intern 🛰️ ESA Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🚀
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Mission Analysis Section internship has university students in Darmstadt building a trajectory optimisation framework for the Comet Interceptor mission.
10. 🇩🇪 Space Weather & OPS-SAT Lab Mission Operations Intern 🛰️ ESA Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🚀
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in the final or second-to-last year of a Master's course · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Space Weather & OPS-SAT Lab Mission Operations internship places you at ESOC in Darmstadt, working on space weather and the OPS-SAT Lab in ESA's Mission Operations Department. OPS-SAT is an award winning space lab where experimenters can run their own software and firmware in space.
11. 🇩🇪 Disruption Tolerant Networking Intern in Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation 🛰️ ESA Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 📡
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 Master's students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Disruption Tolerant Networking internship works on Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking, the technology behind a future Solar System Internet. Interns test and validate protocol implementations and deploy prototype ground systems, and the role is open to Master's students with software skills in Java, Rust or C++ on Linux.
12. 🇩🇪 Navigation Support Office Intern 🛰️ ESA Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 📡
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, ideally at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Navigation Support Office internship is with a team providing the position and timing reference for European missions. You may analyse satellite navigation and geodetic data or develop and validate algorithms and software tools, and knowledge of orbit determination or geodesy is an asset.
13. 🇩🇪 Frequency Management Office Intern 📡 European Space Agency (ESA) Space Safety Programme Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Frequency Management Office internship is part of the Space Safety Programme at ESOC in Darmstadt. The role calls for Matlab programming skills.
14. 🇩🇪 Infrastructure Analytics and Anomaly Detection Intern 📊 ESA Mission Operations Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 Master's students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Infrastructure Analytics and Anomaly Detection internship turns infrastructure logs into operational insight. Interns analyse the Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana log platform, build dashboards and test anomaly detection techniques, and the role suits Master's students familiar with containers, Kubernetes and the ELK stack.
15. 🇩🇪 AI, Data & Digital Twins Intern 🛰️ European Space Agency (ESA) Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🤖
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 Master's students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The AI, Data & Digital Twins internship offers four topics: data platform adoption, AI for spacecraft operations, agentic software engineering and digital twins for health monitoring. It suits Master's students with a background in data science, machine learning or simulation.
16. 🇩🇪 Security Engineering Intern 🔐 European Space Agency (ESA) Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, ideally at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Security Engineering internship lets you choose between post-quantum cryptography research for secure space communications and designing a mission data interface for a next-generation mission control system. It is open to university students with a background in security engineering, network security or cryptography.
17. 🇩🇪 Lunar Image Super-Resolution Intern 🌙 European Space Agency (ESA) Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Lunar Image Super-Resolution internship in the Mission Analysis Section at ESOC develops methods that combine repeated lunar orbital observations into higher resolution surface imagery. This work supports safer landing site selection for future missions.
18. 🇩🇪 Web-Based Operations Tools Intern 🛰️ ESA Mission Operations Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 💻
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Web-Based Operations Tools internship is for university students who like building software. You will create and extend web-based tools that help spacecraft flight control teams in their daily work, covering both backend and frontend development.
19. 🇩🇪 Python Tools for Earth Explorer Flight Operations 🛰️ ESA Mission Operations Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 💻
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Python Tools for Earth Explorer Flight Operations internship has you design and implement Python scripts and tools that automate recurring tasks for the Flight Control Teams of five Earth Explorer missions, with direct exposure to real spacecraft operations.
20. 🇩🇪 Space Debris Office Intern 🛰️ ESA Space Safety Programme Internship in Darmstadt, Germany ☄️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt or Noordwijk · 👥 Master's students · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Space Debris Office internship in Darmstadt or Noordwijk supports the Zero Debris Approach. Interns choose between analysing the evolution of the space debris environment and supporting satellite missions, or working on debris mitigation and remediation concepts, and the role suits Master's students with Python, orbital mechanics or simulation skills.
21. 🇩🇪 Space Weather Office Intern ☀️ ESA Space Safety Programme Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in a Master's course · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Space Weather Office internship offers university students two topics: the design of space weather missions and instruments, or front-end and UI/UX design for space weather products. Either way, you work on the Space Safety side of tracking hazards that come from space.
22. 🇩🇪 Digital Content and Outreach for International Audiences Intern 📣 ESA Communication Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in a Master's course · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Digital Content and Outreach for International Audiences internship in Darmstadt is for university students who want to tell compelling stories about space. You will help make articles and information sheets more engaging, support fact-checking and review translated content while contributing to digital and audiovisual materials for audiences across Europe.
23. 🇩🇪 Innovation and Knowledge Management Intern 💡 ESA Operations Strategy and Coordination Office Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🛰️
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably in the final or second-to-last Master's year · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Innovation and Knowledge Management internship at ESOC supports innovation and knowledge management in the office that works directly with ESA's Director of Operations. The aims of your work will be set around your skills, and a STEM background or knowledge management experience is an asset.
24. 🇩🇪 Visualisation and Communication Intern 🛰️ European Space Agency (ESA) Ground Systems Engineering & Innovation Department Internship in Darmstadt, Germany 🌌
📅 Deadline: 30 November 2026
📍 Darmstadt, Germany · 👥 University students, preferably at Master's level · ⏳ 3 to 6 months
The Visualisation and Communication internship lets you pick between building a 3D space operations visualisation platform or shaping communication and community building for space innovation. Depending on your topic, you will gain hands-on experience with game engines or outreach strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can apply for the 2026 ESA internships in Darmstadt, Germany?
The 24 ESA internships in Darmstadt are open to university students, and most of the calls are aimed at or prefer Master's level. Five calls, the Solar Orbiter, Disruption Tolerant Networking, Infrastructure Analytics, AI, Data & Digital Twins and Space Debris Office internships, are described for Master's students, fifteen name university students preferably or ideally at Master's level, and four name university students without a level. Nineteen calls are open to applicants from 31 countries and five are open to applicants from 27 countries, so the eligible country list on each listing page decides whether you can apply. Before you start, read our guide on how to apply.
When is the deadline for the ESA internships in Darmstadt?
All 24 ESA internships in Darmstadt, Germany close on 30 November 2026. Every call shares the same deadline, but each internship has its own topic, team and skill requirements, so it is worth preparing a separate application for each call that matches your background. Each placement lasts 3 to 6 months, and the Space Debris Office internship lists Darmstadt or Noordwijk as its location. Starting early leaves room to tailor each application, and these application tips can help you prepare.
What skills do the ESA internships in Darmstadt ask for?
The skills depend on the internship, and many of the ESA calls in Darmstadt name programming skills.Python appears in the Solar Orbiter, XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL, Global Interplanetary Trajectory Optimisation, Python Tools for Earth Explorer Flight Operations and Space Debris Office calls, the Frequency Management Office asks for Matlab, and the Disruption Tolerant Networking internship asks for Java, Rust or C++ on Linux. Other calls mention backgrounds such as applied mathematics, physics or aerospace engineering, data science, machine learning or simulation, and security engineering, network security or cryptography. The Innovation and Knowledge Management internship sets its aims around your skills. A clear Europass CV helps you show what you can do.
The 24 calls fall into a few clear groups: flight control and mission operations for missions such as JUICE, ExoMars, Solar Orbiter and the Earth Explorers; mission analysis and flight dynamics work on trajectories and orbit determination; space safety topics on space debris, space weather and frequency management; and software, AI, security and communication roles. Whichever group fits you, an internship like this can support your career development.
Youth Works Hub brings opportunities like these together so you can compare them side by side. Pick the internships that match your skills and open each listing to apply.
