Source: Dr Cordula Barzantny
The SESAME project took place during two intensive weeks from 24 January to 4th February 2022 in a fully remote format via MS Teams.
32 TBS Masters students (MSc & M2) in their final year at TBS across various options (Finance, Marketing, Aerospace…..), among them 5 Students from the MSc Aeropace Management (i.e. Nabil BOUDEN, Romain MOREL, Imane DAMI, Napasorn JONGJITTANON, Nathan LAMOTTE), were working on a challenging assignment provided by CNES, the French National Space Agency.
This team project in cooperation with CNES Organisation entailed the following:
OB1 – Be the first on the Moon student project:
- Objective: Drop a small rover, made by students, on the Moon and perform the following operations:
1. Drop cart(s) on the moon (dispatched from a lander)
2. Take photos and videos of the overall mission
3. Leaving a trace of the passage by dropping a human ashes capsule on the moon surface.
The Project was divided in three main team assignments performed by the 32 students collaborating across four sub-groups during two weeks full-time:
1. Alike an Aerospace programme manager elaborate the work breakdown structure (WBS) including the critical path definition and a detailed financial plan.
2. Determine a contract management plan with a launch service provider: leading a market study and bid preparation.
3. Prepare the mission under CSR (corporate social responsibility) imperatives and make sure, the project is sustainable and avoid a “green disaster” including socio-economic viability and a strategic communication plan.
The project with the various sub-groups was mainly organized and coordinated by the students themselves to also foster their project management and leadership capacity development. It was inspired by an ‘agile’ project management process in two weekly ‘sprints’, supported by TBS Faculty Dr. Soumyadeb Chowdhury and Dr. Cordula Barzantny.
Each week led to a presentation on the advancement and diagnosis for the project objectives, followed by feedback from the commissioning CNES company to our students. The final presentation on the second Friday offered developments and recommendations by the students for the requested mission.
Our gratitude to CNES and particularly Laurent Deroin at Centre National d’Études Spatiales, in charge of Higher Education projects for his involvement into this passionate mission. Our students were inspired to think, work and play to experience the real business world.
Soumyadeb Chowdhury Prof. Dr. Cordula BARZANTNY
Claire GARCIA, PhD (Responsible for SESAME projects).
