SSDC Lab Participates in the AIAA SciTech 2026 Conference

Members of the SSDC Lab attended the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech 2026 Conference, held in Orlando, FL, from 12–16 January 2026. PhD students Achira Boonrath and Dylan LaSalle presented their research on post-capture control for debris-removal systems and orbital trajectory optimization.

Their papers are cited as follows:

• A. Boonrath and E. M. Botta. Model Reference Adaptive Control for Net-Based Debris Towing. AIAA SciTech 2026 Forum, Orlando, FL, January 2026. DOI: 10.2514/6.2026-0212

• D. LaSalle and E. M. Botta. Optimal Low-Thrust Station Keeping Maneuvers to Maintain Desired Osculating Keplerian Orbital Elements. AIAA SciTech Forum 2026, Orlando, FL, January 2026. DOI: 10.2514/6.2026-1664

• D. LaSalle, G. R. Hecht, and E. M. Botta. Analysis of Global Optimization Algorithms for Costate Initialization of Minimum-Time Spiral Transfers. AIAA SciTech Forum 2026, Orlando, FL, January 2026. DOI: 10.2514/6.2026-1261

Dr. Botta participated in the meetings of the AAS Space Flight Mechanics (SFM) Committee, for which she organized the SFM track at SciTech, as well as an editorial board meeting for the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. Dr. Botta and Achira also took part in the Space Tethers Technical Committee meeting.

Achira chaired the Rendezvous, Relative Motion, Proximity Operations, and Docking III session at the conference. The conference also marked Dylan’s first professional conference presentations, and he delivered excellent talks.