Professor founded university space center: Laurent Dusseau put Montpellier into orbit

Laurent Dusseau est aussi un motard passionné de mécanique, amateur d'anciennes qu'il restaure. Midi Libre – SYLVIE CAMBON

The university professor from Sète is the father of the Montpellier University Space Center (CSUM), which he directs, as well as the foundation associated with it. With his students and engineers, this affable 56-year-old man, passionate about technology, has conquered a piece of space thanks to his nanosatellites.

The little things in an office are often the pebbles of Tom Thumb. Which we have not sown, rather harvested but which similarly tell the story of the journey. That of the “secret and discreet” Laurent Dusseau is no exception. Even without embellishment, without ostentation, there are threads that we pull. This electric guitar placed in a corner, largely hidden by a jacket and a shirt “clean”, there “just in case”. He plays it a few times, strummed “in a rock band around 14, 15 years old”, prefers “nylon strings”, “flamenco”, praising the dexterity of these musicians.

There is also, on the wall, behind him, this Concorde cockpit photographed, the acme of aeronautical know-how of the Trente Glorieuses, symbol of excellence. “Incarnation of the dream for the kid that I was”, who, as a student, will take flying lessons. And this dwarf baobab on the meeting table, brought back from Africa: “It is like us: a bonsai space agency.” He named it “the palaver tree”, puts “the human, who fascinates (him), at the center of everything”, of the paroxysm of sophistication and demand that is his universe, in particular: “We cannot imagine how difficult launching a satellite is.”

He “satellized” three of them last year, these tiny little machines on the scale of space, three decades or so after his eyes, fascinated, wandered through the windows of a laboratory at Arizona University.

€1,500 and meetings

From a cupboard, the founder of the Space Center of the University of Montpellier takes out a cube of ten centimeters on each side. Cardboard. “We gave them out to pupils, to students, says the Sète native. We had to cut it out and glue it, so they could see what a cubesat was.” “It was a fun way to interest them”, his students at the IUT of Nîmes, electrical engineering department that, as a young lecturer, he directed at the turn of the millennium.

He himself discovered them some time earlier, therefore, in this famous workshop in Tucson, where he teaches, as a guest professor, in 1996. DEA in electronics, specializing in “effects of radiation on electronic components”, a doctorate on the subject, Laurent Dusseau had his “first decisive encounter”, Jean Gasiot, his boss at the Institute of Electronics and Systems, in Montpellier. He was the one who “taught me ropework – I pull you, you push me, the strong principles of teamwork –, he was the one who made me want to teach.”

It was also Jean Gasiot who sent him to Arizona and suggested in 2001 that he assemble a first nanosat, with these Americans who make them in their glass laboratory. It was about putting one of his experiments into orbit, in connection with a man who would be, ten years later, a key person in the early days of CSUM.

“Michel Courtois. Second decisive meeting. If our satellites are reliable, if five fly and work, we owe it to him.” It is 2006, Laurent Dusseau is 36 years old. Sacred will not reach orbit, destroyed in the explosion of the Ukrainian rocket, but the principles are established: university approach, students at work, who are trained in space careers, nanosatellites at the service of research.

Robusta-1A, a nanosatellite “in garage mode”

The second phase can begin, the Héraultais launch the complete design of their first cubesat, pioneer of French nanosatellites. And there is everything to do, the smallest mechanical element, the electronic cards, etc., all things “that can be bought, today, off the shelf”, but that must be developed. And the teacher does not have a penny to his name, otherwise “€1,500” donated by Jean-Louis Cuq, the university's vice-president in charge of research, whom he had asked for.

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

“I didn't know him,” says the man who would chair UM2 from 2006 to 2008. He made an appointment and presented his project to me. It was crazy, but he was enthusiastic and it was wonderful! I said to myself: “Here is someone remarkable, a stroke of luck for the university.” I had a little money left…” A little, so!

“I had to buy a few components, pay an intern, that's already something!”, laughs Laurent Dusseau. He moves forward, refutes the idea that he is a dreamer – “the most beautiful dreams are those that we have the capacity to realize” –, overcoming obstacles with humble obstinacy. “My mother said I was a dangerous child. I was calm, but capable of setting the house on fire with my experiments!”

My mother said I was a dangerous child. I was calm, but capable of setting the house on fire with my scientific experiments

A French teacher, Renée gave her artistic sensitivity and a taste for poetry. Jacques, her father, a civil engineer in the building trade, “who had the genius to design, knew how to make anything”, bequeathed her this skill and the desire to undertake. And this Robusta-1A project has the air of “getting by”… let’s be clear, of very high technicality!

Overwork and heart problems

His students and he “stay” in building no. 21 “of the Triolet campus, in a 6 m² room without a window”. They gather the pieces of their puzzle created here and there in the components of the university, at the IUT of Nîmes, “but we made a lot of mistakes…”, management, among others.

“I was an academic. Neither a business leader nor a project manager.” He has learned, since then, oh how much, but “stress, permanent anxiety, always out of (his) comfort zone”, he comes out of the adventure exhausted. Operational, Robusta-1A took off on February 13, 2012. It is viable, but too quickly shuts down. “We were tired, demoralized: six years of effort and the rapid loss of the satellite… It could have been just a one-shot.” The teacher would also suffer a year later from a “heart problem. Overwork. All this didn't happen like that…”

The center manufactures nanosatellites, from their design to the provision of data to clients. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

However, it is this half-setback-partial-success that turns out to be the founding act of the CSUM. The boy, as we will have understood, is not a man to give up like that. “One of the lessons learned was that we couldn't work without infrastructure and resources. In 2012, we decided to create what would become the CSUM and the Van Allen Foundation, to seek funding.”

Industrialists and politicians

A former industrialist – Alcaltel Space – who worked at ESA and CNES, Michel Courtois would be a valuable ally in convincing Airbus and Safran to support and fund the center. Laurent Dusseau would also be able to get politicians on board. The Catalan Christian Bourquin, then president of the Region, the Biterrois and former minister Jean-Claude Gayssot, current president of Van Allen.

Michel Courtois had preceded him there. “I remember the first board meeting. There was nothing, they had to learn everything, make budgets. They moved quickly. Laurent was a volunteer; he had trouble trusting, but he learned.” The director of the CSUM admits that it was necessary to delegate, and today, moreover, he has “very much an interface role. I detach myself from technique, but I keep an eye!”

In 2017, Robusta 1-B took off. It “worked perfectly for six and a half years” and eight followed, which forged the reputation of the CSU Héraultais. In Montpellier, it was not a given.

The capital of space, “is Toulouse. But Laurent is extremely competent. In 2019, when I joined the foundation's board of directors for Airbus, we wondered about maintaining our support, but I convinced my management that stopping was out of the question. What Laurent's students learn is very concrete, there is a dynamism that gives you energy, smiles Arnaud de Rosnay, the former head of space engineering at the aircraft manufacturer. It's energizing! And Laurent is in it, serene.” Serene, really? Reality or armor ?

“I still have imposter syndrome”, he said, wrongly.

I subscribe to read the rest