**About the Editors**

### **Simone Battistini**

Simone Battistini is currently the Head of the Simulation & Modeling and Performance Department at MBDA Italy. He has a Masters Degree in Control System Engineering (2009) and a PhD in Aerospace Engineering (2013), both from Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). He has held academic positions as an Associate Professor at the University of Brasilia (Brazil, 2013–2018) and as a Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University (UK, 2019–2022). He also served as a Visiting Researcher at Technion in Haifa (Israel, 2012) and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Vigo (Spain, 2017).

His research interests span across aerospace and control system engineering, with an emphasis on missiles and spacecraft, which have found application in many fields, such as flight mechanics; simulation; guidance, navigation, and control of aerospace vehicles; Kalman filtering; small satellites missions; and tracking. He is coeditor and coauthor of the book *Cubesat Handbook*, published by Academic Press.

### **Filippo Graziani**

Filippo Graziani was a Professor of Astrodynamics at Aerospace Engineering School of Sapienza University of Roma for 35 years until 2012, when he retired, and was the Dean of the School from 2004 to 2010. He is a Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and a Member of the IAA Trustees Board. His didactical and research activity has been mainly directed towards the "hands-on" space educational programs.

He participated in the main Italian space programs starting with the San Marco satellites in 1970 and he was the team leader of the Italian University Satellites Program (UNISAT) with the aim of designing, manufacturing, and launching microsatellites with his students. Ten microsatellites have been launched since 2000.

In 2012, he founded the company GAUSS (Group of Astrodynamics for the Use of Space Systems) as a spin-off of the Aerospace Engineering School, active in the space technology field, and for which he is the President and CEO. He is the author of more than 200 technical papers on astrodynamics and space systems. He has been the Co-Editor of *Acta Astronautica* since 2009. He received the "Utkin Golden Medal" for international relationship between Russia and Italy for University Satellite Launches and the "M.K.Yangel—100 years Golden Medal" for the contribution to the development of space science in the world. Since 1975, he has participated in the IAF Conferences.

### **Mauro Pontani**

Mauro Pontani is currently an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Department of Astronautical, Electrical, and Energy Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome. He is a corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics. He was Visiting Scholar and Visiting Researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, and at Rice University, Houston, TX, several times from 2004 through 2017. He earned the Italian National Qualification for the position of Full Professor of Aerospace Engineering in 2017. He is a member of the Academic Board of the Ph.D. course "Energy and Environment" at Sapienza.

His research interests are in the field of astrodynamics and aerospace trajectory optimization, and specifically include aerospace mission analysis and design, analytical and numerical methods for trajectory optimization, guidance and control of aerospace vehicles, dynamic game theory applied to aerospace trajectories, satellite constellations, launch, ascent and descent vehicles, and satellite release systems. He is the author of more than 100 scientific publications (including 42 journal papers), and currently serves as Associate Editor for the *Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications*, *Acta Astronautica*, *Aerotecnica Missili e Spazio*, *Mathematical Problems in Engineering*, and the *International Journal of Aerospace Engineering*. He has taken part in several research projects as researcher or principal investigator.
