DC1 – Digital Twin for In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing

Vinicius Marchioli M.Sc.

Partner Organisations

ISAE-SUPAERO (PhD awarding institution)
DYCSYT
Thales Alenia Space, France

Supervisors

Dr. Francesco Sanfedino — ISAE-SUPAERO
Prof. Daniel Alazard — ISAE-SUPAERO
Dr. Ervan Kassarian — DYCSYT
Dr. Andrea Guarriello — Thales Alenia Space
Dr. Hervé Legay — Thales Alenia Space

Description of the Work Project

Large-aperture antennas are a key enabling technology for a broad range of space applications, from traditional communication and radar services to advanced communication methods, remote sensing, deep-space exploration, and power-transfer spacecraft. A larger aperture improves signal resolution and the signal-to-noise ratio, while its geometric precision directly governs spatial resolution and sensitivity. Achieving such apertures remains a significant challenge, however, particularly for high-frequency Ka- and X-band missions, which typically require diameters more than 30 metres. Although recent progress in on-orbit autonomous manufacturing and assembly has made it possible to build large, lightweight structures directly in space, ensuring surface accuracy, spacecraft stability, and deployment reliability continues to limit the maturity of monolithic solutions. A promising alternative is to replace a single large reflector with a swarm of free-flying or tethered small satellites, phased together to synthesise a coherent beam at the target radio frequency — an approach of growing interest for high data-rate deep-space links and for 6G direct-to-cell connectivity. Such swarms are inherently reconfigurable, since the same formation can be re-tasked through coordinated manoeuvres to serve multiple mission objectives, but they introduce considerable complexity: the translational and attitude dynamics of the constituent satellites are strongly coupled and must be regulated to maintain the relative positioning, orientation, timing, and phase synchronisation on which coherent operation depends. When the satellites are tethered, structural flexibility arising from the tethers and from appendages such as solar panels and antennas further couples the translational and rotational motion, and orbital perturbations that evolve with the relative geometry of the swarm must be carefully accounted for to guarantee reliable performance. Tethered architectures also open the possibility of exploiting electrodynamic forces: by driving a current through a conductive tether, its interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field can generate controllable forces for manoeuvring and de-orbiting, a mechanism that remains largely unexplored for the coordinated control of satellite swarms. Building on the team’s expertise in the modelling and robust control of large flexible space structures — through the Two-Input Two-Output Port (TITOP) multibody framework and the SDTlib toolbox — and on Thales Alenia Space’s expertise in advanced antenna technology, this PhD will develop a high-fidelity digital twin of a swarm-based large antenna, together with the simplified models required for robust control synthesis and formal analysis. The work will deliver innovative distributed attitude and orbital control algorithms that jointly account for gravitational, thermal, radiation, and structural-flexibility effects as well as actuator saturation and control coordination across the swarm; it will assess the use of radio-frequency diagnostics of the transmitted and received signal as an intra-swarm metrology system; and it will evaluate both classical and non-classical (electrodynamic-tether) actuation for in-orbit reconfiguration and de-orbiting.