Science, Technology and Systems Engineering Educational Activities with Stratospheric Balloons

In 2021, the Space Systems Laboratory of the University of Pisa (UniPi) started a student-oriented high-altitude ballooning programme intended to provide an opportunity for hands-on experience in support of the teaching of scientific and technical courses. The programme provides mentoring on scientific, technical and management issues, along with financial support and assistance with integration and launch on a sounding balloon platform. The goal is to conduct flying experiments in the stratosphere, retrieve them after landing and process the results; by doing so, the students experience all phases of a scientific mission project, from conceptual design to realisation, operations and post-flight analysis. Following a call for proposal open to all students of the UniPi across all study areas, three experiments were selected featuring multidisciplinary teams. This paper summarises the features of the programme’s first edition and presents the main lessons learned.