What is it?

The International School on Space Optics is an event that targets to serve the community of young engineers and scientists who are already active or have the aspiration to work in the field of Spaceborne Optics.

It offers an intensive 5-days immersion program of lectures, design project and visits to space-related facilities. The course can be seen as a “compressed” 1-year class on Space Optics which would have been part of a Master Program in Spaceborne Technologies and Applications. It will allow 360 degrees exposure to all disciplines or optical engineering in space. A Certificate of Attendance will be provided to any participant that has been present consistently throughout the Course.

The first ISSO was organised as a “Winter College on Space Optics” in February 2015 at the UNESCO International Centre for Theoretical Physics – ICTP within the frame of the “2015-International Year of Light”.  Following this event it was decided to establish the ISSO as a systematic biannual event. In 2017 the ISSO was hosted at the European Space Research and Technology Center in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

ISSO 2019 will be organized with the local support of the Italian Society of Optics and Photonics (SIOF). It will be hosted at the Headquarters of the ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) in the center of Rome. 



Code of Conduct

The school organization is committed to providing an environment that is conducive to the free and robust exchange of scientific ideas. This environment requires that all participants be treated with equal consideration and respect. 
The participants are therefore expected to conduct themselves professionally and respectfully. All forms of bullying, discrimination, and harassment are prohibited. This policy applies to every individual at the event, whether attendee, speaker, exhibitor, staff, contractor or other. 

Why we do it?

Engineers and Scientists working on any discipline of spaceborne optics tend frequently to be very specialised in the narrow field of their first work missing opportunities in serving other disciplines. Also, optical engineers who have not yet engaged in any kind of activity in Space do not have a complete understanding of where their skills could be applied. The school will provide a 360- degree overview of the broad area of Space Optics covering Applications, Instrumentation and Technologies opening hence the horizons and opportunities for the young engineers/scientists to assess better all available opportunities.

ISSO is a sister event of the International Conference on Space Optics – ICSO and it is organised biannually in alternative years than ICSO. 

The last ICSO was held in October 2018 in Chania, Greece and the next one will be held in October 2020 in France.



The ICSO proceedings are freely and readily available on the ICSO proceedings site of the SPIE Digital Library. (Click on image below).




The CEAS Space Journal



The Space Journal of the Council of the European Aerospace Societies invites papers on Space Optics, Optoelectronics & Photonics which will be peer-review. The content of the papers must be original and not having been published before. Interested authors should prepare their paper including in theoretical analysis, the engineering solution and its applicability in spacecraft engineering. The papers should be submitted through the CEAS Space Journal webpage

 Who should attend?

Young engineers or scientists with a background in any field of Optics, Optoelectronics or Photonics. Background should be demonstrated by:

- a Masters or PhD degree in any Optics discipline
- actively pursuing a PhD in any Optics discipline
- working as a researcher in any Optics discipline in a university/research centre/industry
- working in a company/university on Space Optics projects

Without having a strict age limit it is expected that the participants will be in generally younger than 40 years old and with limited experience in the field of Space Optics.

How many people will participate?

50 people will participate in ISSO 2019. The selection is based on merit and expected benefit for the student.

How much will it cost?

Thanks to the support of sponsors the fees for the students will be kept to a minimum registration fee of 200 euros.

ISSO Poster



Please click here for a download of the A0 poster.

Please click here for a download of the A2 poster.