European Space Agency appoints Maths researcher
In November last year, the first Optimisation in Space Engineering Workshop was held at the University of Birmingham, jointly organised by Universities Southampton, Birmingham, Cambridge, and the European Space Agency (ESA). Following this, Mathematical Science’s Professor Joerg Fliege was invited as to become a visiting researcher for the ESA.
Current space engineering problems across a wide range of areas demand powerful, and robust mathematical optimisation methods to increase the efficiency of the design and the operation of space missions. Various problems such as finding good interplanetary flight paths, optimal rendezvous spacecraft orbits, entry, descent and landing trajectories and many others are currently very difficult to solve or have no current satisfactory solution. Further mathematical developments in this area have the potential to save millions of $/EURO in fuel costs alone, per mission, thereby generating enormous savings or enabling ESA to extend the lifetime of missions to a great extent, while also opening up space further to commercial enterprises. It is these hard optimisation problems that ESA hopes to make some progress on in the near future.
Joerg comments, "The European Space Agency and the University of Southampton are highly interested in strengthening their links with each other, and this research visit provides an ideal opportunity to forge a stronger relationship in the areas of local and global optimisation for trajectory control, mission design, and other problems occurring in space engineering. I am grateful for the support of the European Space Agency to make this happen, and I much appreciate this opportunity."
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Professor Jörg Fliege
Professor Jörg Fliege is Head of Operational Research within Mathematical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
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