MIT AeroAstro’s first-year aerospace design course showcases a hands-on engineering education experience where students build Arduino sensors, GPS balloon payloads, and conduct stratospheric balloon launch experiments in a first-year engineering class.

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MIT News

MIT's AeroAstro department revived its 16.00 Introduction to Aerospace Engineering course, giving first-year students a hands-on design-build experience culminating in stratospheric balloon launches. Five student teams built Arduino-based sensor payloads with GPS and radio communications, launched from the New York Catskills, and reached altitudes of approximately 22 kilometers — capturing the curvature of the Earth on GoPro cameras before parachuting back down. The course, co-taught by former NASA astronaut Jeffery Hoffman and professor Oliver de Weck, was reintroduced in 2025 after being paused during the pandemic, with future iterations planned around fixed-wing aircraft, drones, and rockets.

Flying at the edge of the stratosphere