My doctoral research focuses on developing advanced guidance, navigation and control (GNC) architectures for the next generation of autonomous satellite missions. As future space systems evolve towards distributed, cooperative, and highly reconfigurable constellations, there is growing interest in robust, decision-capable control frameworks that ensure orbital sustainability and coordinated fleet behaviour.
One of the primary research areas within the SIU context is the control of VLEO orbits and attitudes in the presence of severe environmental disturbances. Operating at altitudes below ~400 km exposes spacecraft to significant atmospheric drag, aerodynamic torques, and rapidly varying perturbations. In this context, my research focuses on coupled orbit–attitude control strategies that can account for these effects, even when modelling is challenging and involves uncertainty. The aim is to use nonlinear and geometric control techniques to design controllers that can guarantee stability and performance directly on nonlinear configuration manifolds (e.g. SE(3) and SO(3)), while avoiding singular parametrization and improving robustness to model uncertainties.
Some of the proposed methodologies have been validated in close collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UniNa). As part of this joint project, high-fidelity simulation environments have been developed to accurately reproduce realistic operational conditions. These include coupled position and attitude dybamics, orbital perturbations, actuator behaviour and representative sensing constraints.
The focus has been on drag-dominated VLEO regimes, where small attitude variations can significantly impact the influence of drag torques on satellite orientation and orbital decay, thereby affecting mission lifetime. The framework supports the analysis of coupled orbits and attitudes and enables a quantitative evaluation of stability and robustness, and allows validation under realistic, high-fidelity modelling conditions.
A second core topic of my research is distributed control and consensus-based coordination for satellite fleets. Future missions are increasingly relying on multi-agent architectures for Earth observation, in-orbit servicing and space traffic management. My aim is to develop distributed guidance and control algorithms that enable satellites to autonomously maintain formation, reconfigure, and execute cooperative tasks. These frameworks integrate consensus theory, Lyapunov-based stability analysis and optimisation-driven guidance laws to ensure scalable, provably stable coordination even when communication is constrained and information is partial.

Click here for more information and here to view my poster.