[1] Brachet earned an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Aeronautique in 1967 and a MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington in 1968.

He began his professional career at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France, and from 1972 to 1982 was successively Head of the Orbit Determination and Spacecraft Dynamics Department, the Scientific Programmes Division and the Application Programmes Division.

During this period he helped prepare and implement several major space programmes, at the European level and internationally.

In 1982 Brachet was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of SPOT IMAGE and remained in this position until 1994.

He is serving as a chairman of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) from 2006 to 2007.