The club will increase the occupation of engineering students in the fields of space and train them to work in the field
The last decade presented a dramatic change in the field of space and in particular in research, until even venture capital funds began to express interest - but the high-tech industry is not there yet.
In order to bridge the gap, the Minister of Innovation announced yesterday Orit Farkash HaCohen that you will allocate NIS 600 million to the Israeli Space Agency, and in the meantime Afka - the Academic College of Engineering in Tel Aviv is launching the space club for learning and applied activity in the field, with the aim of increasing the engagement of engineering students in the fields of space and thus aligning with the new trends and possibilities that the market offers in this field.
The establishment of the club was initiated by Rim Ghanem, a mechanical engineering student who participated in the college's "club day", which includes the robotics club, the art and engineering club, the CTRL FREAK club and more, who recognized the potential and took the initiative.
She managed to harness the faculty members Dr. Ido Entavi (former CEO of SPACEIL) and Dr. Eyal Katz (head of the image processing track) to the task, and along the way Sapir Lazar, a graduate who works in the field of radiation in space, also joined. The response of the students to the new club that will operate under the college's innovation and entrepreneurship center is already very great.
The establishment of the club does not operate in a vacuum, as the general atmosphere is that of space missions in recent years - private and national ones that have been carried out and are being carried out even at the time of writing these lines. This is alongside the development of a real space market, in which a very small number of particularly brave startups operate, but which by the end of the decade, as promised by the CEO of the Space Agency Brigadier General (Ret.) Uri Oron, will be valued at a trillion dollars and more.
As part of the establishment of the club, a series of 16 lectures of two hours each will be held, which will first align all the students, in everything related to space, spacecraft, satellites, what are the elements that make them up, how does a spacecraft engine work, a spacecraft's propulsion system, since it is different From the engine of a vehicle to which most people have access and have an idea about its activity, as far as the field of space is concerned - expanding the students' knowledge and familiarity with the technological environment is required.
In the next step, the club's leaders will choose the space mission on which the club will focus, and there will already be collaborations with the industry, with the Israeli Space Agency, with other academies, etc., since such a mission involves many resources of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The activity of such a club, operating under the umbrella of the innovation center, will be based on technological innovation and entrepreneurship, solving challenges and carrying out innovative projects.
Dr. Ido Antavi, a faculty member at the School of Mechanical Engineering: "Afeka understands that the space industry itself and the industries related to it are one of the areas that are expected to see a very significant development in the coming years, so it is critical that engineering students get to know and prepare themselves for work in these areas, since they concern all The types of engineering. Starting with electrical engineering, through mechanical engineering, systems engineering, software engineering and more. Therefore, one of my intentions is to make sure that the project we will work on will be a cross-departmental, multidisciplinary project. As in the companies themselves, so also in the study phase - the integrated work between the technological departments is very important, and the integration of system engineering can contribute to the project and the students."
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