The Master's Degree Programme in Space Sciences
General description
The Master's Degree Programme in Space Sciences is a new programme at the University of Helsinki, initiated in the autumn term of 2007. It is organized by the Department of Physics. The goal of the programme is to educate students with outstanding skills needed both in post-graduate studies and in many other, often international, careers in space sciences or related fields.
Each student has a personal study plan that can emphasize experimental or observational work, methods for data-analysis, or theoretical science. The study plan includes fundamental courses and a number of special items. These may be selected from an extensive menu, including lecture courses, laboratory exercises, observational work, data-analysis, or computer simulations. The student can also include in his/her personal study plan courses in space technology and remote sensing at the Aalto University. While the individual study plans may be different, all students participate in joint seminars, where they report on topics which they have studied themselves. The goal is to complete the Master's Programme in two academic years.
During the last semester of the programme the student writes a Master's Thesis. Its topic is closely tied with state-of-the-art research in Astronomy or Space Physics, which may be related with ongoing research projects of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) or the European Space Agency (ESA), or other international space research programmes. In addition to the University departments, the Space Research and Remote Sensing Units of the Finnish Meteorological Institute provide supervision and challenging Master's thesis topics for the students. Often the thesis topic is based on work that the student has started as a summer trainee between the first and second year of the programme.