Space exploration plays a major role in the history of humankind. The cultural, political and sociological repercussions are extraordinary, and the amount of resources dedicated to space exploration is enormous. This aerospace course is a first step for those interested in learning more about the history of the space and the impact of space exploration on our daily lives.

Each week we will focus on a major chapter in the history of space exploration accompanied by an introduction to the relevant technical topics to fully understand these historical developments. During the seven weeks of the course, we will follow the technical, political and cultural contexts that lead to the birth of the space age, uncover the evolution of space exploration from competition to cooperation in the Apollo and post-Apollo era and finally, analyze current trends in space exploration.

By successfully completing this course, you will acquire the critical tools to understand the key events and developments of the Space Age. You will learn to solve basic technical and engineering problems of space travel, rocket propulsion, space systems, and human space flight.

Evaluation

The evaluation is based on seven final tests about the contents: videos and documents. To pass the course it is necessary to obtain the 60% of the final grade.

Feed-back

History of space travels and flights, of missiles, rockets and space stations, life in space, space exploitation for humankind (telecom, earth observation, GNSS,…), propulsion systems – a very well structured and rich content Mooc, containing videos and lecture materials. Each test consists of 10 questions, a few of them are based on calculations, others are more general and refer to the presented documents and videos. Some internet researches are necessary to respond. There is only 1 single attempt to answer the questions, so one has to be careful and pay attention to each word. Personal score was 91%.

Reinhard Finke