Andrea Valmorbida is currently an Assistant Professor (RTDb) at the Department of Industrial Engineering (DII) of the University of Padova, and is part of the Group of Measurements and Technologies for Space (GMTS) (https://research.dii.unipd.it/mts/).
He received his Master’s degree cum laude in Aerospace Engineering in 2009 at the University of Padova (Italy). From 2010 to 2014 he attended the PhD school in Sciences, Technologies and Measurements for Space (STMS) at the Center of Studies and Activities for Space “Giuseppe Colombo” (CISAS), University of Padova, working on the development and testing of Model Predictive Control (MPC) strategies for Spacecraft Formation Flying, and he obtained his PhD degree in 2014. As part of his PhD studies, in 2012 he spent a research period at the Space System Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) working on the test of MPC strategies using the SPHERES testbed.
From 2014 to 2020 he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Padova, where he continued his research activities mainly on: (a) the development and experimental testing of relative measurements systems and guidance navigation and control algorithms for satellite proximity operations, and (b) measurement systems, dynamics and control for electrodynamic and inert tethered satellite systems. From 2020 to 2023 he was a Research Associate (RTDa) at DII, where he continues his research activities in the aforementioned fields and holds part of the lessons of the courses Aerospace Instrumentation and Mechanical and Thermal Measurements in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering degree programs. Since 2023 he is an Assistant Professor (RTDb) at DII and he holds part of the lessons of the courses Space Instrumentation and Satellite Navigation in the Aerospace Engineering Master degree program. Since 2022, he also holds part of the lessons of the course Space Systems and their Control at the Ph.D. school in STMS of CISAS.
He was a member of the research group of 8 international and national projects, of which one FP7 (BETs), one H2020 (E.T.PACK) and one HORIZON EIC Transition (E.T.PACK-F) (https://etpack.eu/). He will be the unit leader for the University of Padova of the HORIZON EIC Pathfinder project E.T.COMPACT (starting on October 2024). He is author of 15 peer-reviewed journal articles and 50 peer-reviewed papers for international conferences and national congress. In addition, he is one of the inventor of the In-Line Damper (ILD), a passive mechanical device used to reduce the oscillations of tethered systems. The ILD obtained a national Italian patent in 2023 (102021000027338) and an International extension of patent (PCT) in 2024 (PCT/IB2022/060199).
In addition, since 2012 he has been one of the main developers of SPARTANS, a cooperating spacecraft testbed for autonomous proximity operations experiments. Till now, this facility has been employed by the researchers and the Ph.D. students of the Group of Measurements and Technologies for Space (MTS) for their research activities. In addition, this facility was employed to support E.T.PACK and E.T.PACK-F projects and to successfully validate the standard docking interface breadboards provided by OHB Italia and SENER within the ESA Program “Preliminary Design of In-Space Transportation Proof of Concept-1 (Poc-1): In-Orbit Rendezvous and Docking - Phase B1 Studies”.

Main research areas:
a) mechanical and thermal measurements, including uncertainty evaluation;
b) measurement systems and guidance navigation and control algorithms for satellite proximity operations (https://research.dii.unipd.it/mts/vision-based-navigation/);
c) measurement systems and dynamics and control strategies and algorithms for electrodynamic and inert tethered satellite systems (https://research.dii.unipd.it/mts/space-tethers/).

Some topics for thesis proposals:
a) Satellite proximity operations, eventually with testing with the SPARTANS facility (https://research.dii.unipd.it/mts/spartans-facility/);
b) Electrodynamic or inert tethered satellite systems;
c) Global Navigation Satellite Systems.
For additional information, send an e-mail to andrea.valmorbida@unipd.it.