Antonio Rizza — Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University

About

I am a Spacecraft Guidance Navigation and Control (GNC) Engineer with experience in modeling, simulation and testing of dynamical Space Systems, spacecraft autonomy, precise formation flying and astrodynamics. Leveraging seven years of research on autonomous space robotics probes, I had leading GNC roles for both Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and deep-space missions sponsored by national and international agencies across Europe and the United States. At Stanford, I am currently focused on enabling and flight testing ground breaking GNC technologies for the next generation of distributed space systems. I have been GNC Engineer for the Milani, LUMIO, and STARI missions.

Research Experience

01/2025 - ongoing

Postdoctoral Scholar Stanford University - SLAB team

Enabling safe, robust and high precision GNC solutions for the next generation of distributed space systems. Lead GNC engineer for the STARI mission.

11/2024 - 12/2024

Research Fellow (Senior) Politecnico di Milano - DART team

Developing guidance and control solution for proximity operations around small bodies. Supporting the development of a robotic facility for validation and verification of GNC algorithm.

01/2023 - 12/2023

Visiting Research Scholar Stanford University - SLAB team

Goal-oriented trajectory optimization about asteroids using sequential convex programming. Hardware in the loop validation of Active SLAM approaches using the robotic testbed for rendezvous and optical navigation at SLAB.

11/2021 - 11/2024

PhD cum laude in Aerospace Engineering Politecnico di Milano - DART team

Goal-oriented guidance under uncertainties for small bodies exploration. GNC engineer for the Milani and LUMIO missions.

11/2020 - 10/2021

Research Fellow Politecnico di Milano - DART team

Development of high-fidelity six-degrees-of-freedom simulator for autonomous deep-space missions.

10/2019 - 06/2020

M.Sc. Thesis VKI, Belgium

Simulation and testing of gas-surface interaction phenomena in atmospheric re-entry conditions for Design for Demise analysis.

08/2017 - 09/2017

Research Internship VKI, Belgium

Software developer for the VKI Expandable Stability and Transition Analysis toolkit to predict boundary layer transition in high speed flow.

Education

09/2017 - 06/2020

M.Sc. cum laude in Space Engineering Politecnico di Milano

05/2019

ESA Academy Space Debris Training Course ESEC GALAXIA, Belgium

10/2014 - 09/2017

Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering Politecnico di Milano

Selected Publications — Google Scholar

Space Interferometry Formation Design Using Relative Orbital Elements: The STARI Mission

A Rizza, E Foss, J Monnier, JW Cutler, S D'Amico

2026 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, Montana

2026 📄 4 citations PDF DOI

The Vision-Based Guidance, Navigation, and Control System of Hera's Milani CubeSat

M Pugliatti, F Piccolo, A Rizza, V Franzese, F Topputo

Acta Astronautica 210, 14–28

2023 📄 34 citations DOI

Vision-Based Navigation for the LUMIO CubeSat Mission

P Panicucci, F Piccolo, A Rizza, G Merisio, F Topputo, R Walker

46th AAS Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference

2024 📄 14 citations Scholar

Goal-Oriented Guidance Under Uncertainties for Small Bodies Proximity Operations

A Rizza, S D'Amico, F Topputo

2025 AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting, Kaua'i, HI, January 2025

2025 📄 2 citations PDF

Other Publications

Sort by:

Research Projects

01/2026 - ongoing

Flight Demonstration of Autonomous Navigation in GEO

Collaboration with Blue Origin to demonstrate in GEO for the first time autonomous navigation capabilities based on angles-only navigation and CNN-based relative pose estimation to known targets.

01/2025 - ongoing

FALCON — Research Co-lead

Fast Autonomous Lost-in-space Catalog-based Optical Navigation (FALCON) is a new alternative space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) system for responsive Space Situational Awareness (SSA) of on-orbit assets.

11/2021 - 11/2024

PhD Research — Politecnico di Milano - DART team

Goal-oriented guidance and control methodology for proximity operations around small bodies. The approach relies on the combination of abstract reachability analysis to generate the initial trajectory with Sequential Convex Programming (SCP) to refine it within a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework under navigation, dynamics and control uncertainties.

11/2020 - 06/2022

PRESS

Proposal for Rams Enhancing in Small Satellites (PRESS) is a project aimed at improving Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) for CubeSats reducing their currently high failure rate.

Missions

STARI

Orbit and GNC Engineer

The STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry (STARI) mission is a technology demonstration designed to advance key technologies for future space-based interferometry. The mission makes use of two 8U CubeSats flying in close formation, effectively simulating one arm of a space interferometer.

LUMIO

AOCS Engineer

The Lunar Meteoroid Impact Observer (LUMIO) is a CubeSat mission to a quasi-halo orbit at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point designed to complement ground-based observations and characterize the lunar meteoroid environment.

Milani

GNC Engineer

The Milani CubeSat is part of ESA's Hera mission, the European contribution to the ESA-NASA collaboration AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) around the binary asteroid 65803 Didymos.