The main purpose of this document is to provide a description of the main research activities and the expertise of the Department of Aerospace Science and Technology of Politecnico di Milano in the area of Space Mission Engineering. The Department represents an interesting and a reliable partner for all the Industries and the Small and Medium Enterprises that need to perform high qualified research in the space sector but also in other related fields.
Within the Department, a qualified group of researchers at all academic levels, hereafter called synthetically called Space Group, performs theoretical, numerical and experimental researches in the area of space engineering. The financial support comes mostly from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), from the European Space Agency (ESA) and from the major Italian and European companies active in the field.
The experience in theoretical researches related to space problems such as spacecraft design, mission planning/scheduling, on-board autonomy, planetary exploration, trajectory optimization, image processing, navigation, control and filtering has been developed starting in the 1990’s, when a small group of researchers dedicated to space research was set up. Since then, a variety of researches have been completed, not only of academic interest but also with a strong relationship with industrial application. Some of the skills and capabilities developed are presented in this website.
For a slideshow presentation of the activities, click here (pdf file).