ASCenSIon innovative training network: mid-term overview and lessons learned

The field of access to space is wide and complex, and it involves several disciplines and areas of expertise such as propulsion physics, software development, experimental studies, numerical simulations, thermodynamics, missionisation, etc. A gap in the training of young European researchers at doctoral level has been identified in this field, as no high-level education programme exists with the ability to range across such a large range of research topics. With the aim to fill this gap, 24 European entities from academia, industry and research centers have partnered in the framework of "ASCenSIon", an Innovative Training Network funded by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska Curie Action. The objective of the project is to contribute to the establishment of a both ecologically and economically sustainable space access for Europe, therefore advancing its State of the Art. This is achieved by training 15 Early Stage Researchers of different background, nationality, gender and age, to become experts in their fields and to have a deep understanding of the access to space domain as a whole. Within ASCenSIon, the Early Stage Researchers, who are enrolled in a PhD programme, acquire both technical and transferable skills thanks to an inclusive and diverse training programme held at local and project level. Unlike more ordinary PhDs, the training offered by ASCenSIon does not only focus on narrow scopes of research fields, one domain (e.g. industry or academia) and one country. It features instead an interdisciplinary, intersectoral and multicultural approach. The offer includes training events in different forms, such as workshops, lectures, experimental weeks and summer schools, which are complemented by the participation in conferences and similar events. Given that the project started in January 2020 and will end in December 2023, this paper provides a midterm overview of the project and the lessons learned so far, with a particular focus on the remote vs in-person training experience forced by the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.