Oct 22, 2026
ESA GNC 2026
The Chair presented some of its latest research findings at this year's ESA GNC & ICATT Conference in Seville, Spain. The conference provided an international platform for active exchange between academic and industrial partners in the European space industry.
Markus Lötzsch and Mario Izquierdo Serra investigated Polynomial Chaos as an Efficient V&V Approach for AOCS/GNC. The approach aims to complement expensive Monte Carlo simulations for the validation of spacecraft control. The paper describes two different implementations of the method for the pointing analysis of satellites. The significantly higher efficiency of the approach compared to Monte Carlo is demonstrated on two satellite missions and the advantages and disadvantages of the two implementations are being discussed.
For the Last Click Competition, Markus Lötzsch investigated a satellite model subject to uncertainties. The goal was to identify the worst-case configuration of the uncertain parameters that leads to a maximum pointing error. The Last Click is a benchmark control problem published in collaboration with the ESA to evaluate new methods and approaches using a highly detailed simulation model of a realistic satellite.