Hands-on education and students formation for aerospace systems engineering : looking back upon the Soprano experience

One of our greatest goals in education is to prepare our students for the realities of the work they will have to cope with during their future long years of professional activity. Concerning aerospace, an important part of this work is often acting in a complex project. Factors such as team work, system management... are key points to meet success. They are understood with more efficiency through hands-on education, than through lectures only. Ten years after a student platform flown under balloon have been developed, lessons learned are exposed, especially analysing the experience on the following points : adequacy of the action described with formation to space systems engineering, impact on the beginning of the professional life, and feed back on educative approach. The SOPRANO experience is described, as well as the education pattern adopted. It consists in the development, testing and flight under a CNES balloon of a payload precursor of a micro-satellite platform. The experiment concerned the students of the two main Schools of Aerospace Engineering in France, SUPAERO and ENSICA, located in Toulouse, and involved the AAAF, a French association of professionals in the aerospace area.