Aerospace engineering associate professor to track orbits in cislunar space
Aerospace Engineering
By Dustin Duncan
It might look like empty space, but the vast stretch between Earth and the Moon is becoming increasingly crowded, and Davide Guzzetti aims to make sense of it.
The work is backed by a three-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Guzzetti, an associate professor of aerospace engineering, is leading a project to understand how spacecraft move through cislunar space and develop better methods for tracking them.
The award supports research that could reshape how scientists and defense agencies describe, detect and predict orbital motion in one of the solar system’s most complex regions. Guzzetti is partnering with Firas Khasawneh, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, to build mathematical tools capable of mapping orbital paths that defy traditional models.
“Most of what we know about orbits comes from studying objects close to Earth, where there’s only one main source of gravity,” Guzzetti said. “Once you move into cislunar space, both Earth’s and the Moon’s gravity act together. You can’t separate them, and that makes everything much harder to predict and describe.”
Guzzetti said orbital paths near Earth are neat ellipses and parabolas calculated with a single equation. But where Earth’s and the Moon’s gravities compete, those paths twist into far less predictable shapes.
His team is building computer models to describe these complex orbits, combining physics and advanced mathematics to represent how spacecraft actually move.
“What we’re really asking is, what does an orbit in cislunar space look like?” Guzzetti said. “And how do we describe that shape in a way that helps us understand what’s happening out there?”
Researchers