Mission Operations Intern (Full time)

Type: Intern

· Location: Hybrid /On-site (Tokyo, Japan)

· Experience Level: College student (3rd year or higher) or recent graduate (1-2 years after graduation)

· Duration: Start in Fall/Winter 2026 with 6 month (required) - 1 year (preferred) options

· Office: JP Engineering Office

· Group: JP Mission Test & Operations Group, JP Test and Flight Operations Division

· Position: Mission Operations Intern

We will prioritize domestic candidates for this position due to visa requirements. 

Hourly rate : 1,500yen/hours. 

We are seeking a Mission Operations Intern to join the core technical team responsible for preparing, testing, and executing flight operations for a lunar lander mission. In this role, you will develop the command procedures, telemetry displays, processes, and checklists used to fly the spacecraft from the Mission Control Center. Your work will be used by operators during simulations, trainings, testing, rehearsals and flight to perform initial checkouts, commissioning activities, payload operations, orbital maneuvers, and surface operations.

You will collaborate with engineering teams to turn technical designs, constraints, and flight rules into procedures used to operate the lander. Additionally, you will drive the optimization and verification of flight segment products leveraging tools such as Jira, GitLab, and AI-powered utilities. This is a unique opportunity to serve as a primary contributor to mission-critical ground and flight systems take ispace’s next mission to the Moon.

Develop Procedures, Checklists, Displays

· Participate in spacecraft design discussions with engineers from various teams

· Develop standardized procedures (Python scripts) used to send commands to and confirm telemetry from the spacecraft

· Write comprehensive unit tests run in CI/CD

· Contribute to training material for procedure development

· Create Confluence checklists used to execute the operations concept

· Develop Grafana displays for mission-specific scenarios

Optimize Operation Development

· Implement automated checks for standards adherence within procedures and checklists

· Use AI agents to streamline procedure development

· Streamline the analysis and remediation of CI/CD unit test failures using automated workflows

By developing and verifying command and telemetry products used by the flight team during operations, you will:

· Bridge the gap between spacecraft design and flight operations procedures

· Ensure the safety and quality of command sequences and checklists

· Make the operational development process more efficient

· Enable the next phase of operation preparations (training, testing, rehearsals)

o Understand the basic fundamentals of programming (functions, loops, if statements, arrays, etc.)

o Strong attention to detail and the ability to work independently

o Strong communication skills in English (written and verbal)

o Demonstrated ability to learn different engineering disciplines