About Us
A Flight Dynamics company
Nautilus - Navigation in Space specializes in advanced Flight Dynamics solutions for LEO, Lunar and deep-space missions, supporting the entire mission lifecycle—from design and simulation to in-orbit operations.
Autonomy drives our solutions as we combine ground-based and on-board autonomous technologies to empower spacecrafts in navigating the most challenging environments, enabling the next generation of self-driving satellites.
Whether managing dense LEO constellations, navigating lunar orbits, or exploring the depths of space, Nautilus provides the tools and expertise to ensure success at every stage of the mission lifecycle.
Origins
Review our 20-year experience of space exploration
ORBIT DETERMINATION
Nautilus technical offer is solidly rooted in over of two decades of research activity within the Radio Science and Planetary Exploration and the Microsatellites and Space Microsystems laboratories of the University of Bologna.
The two teams have achieved remarkable achievements thanks to their involvement in several international projects in the area of orbit determination, planetary science and the desing, development, testing, and communication of micro and nano-satellite systems.
The teams have conducted research activities performing data analysis for past NASA and ESA deep space missions like Pioneer, Galileo and Cassini. Currently, they are engaged in groundbreaking future missions including Juno, Bepi-Colombo, Exomars 2022, HERA, Juice, and Europa Clipper. Additionally, the teams successfully navigated the first two European interplanetary CubeSats, LICIACube and ArgoMoon, both funded and coordinated by ASI, marking a significant milestone in space exploration.
Credit: ESA/Science Office
GUIDANCE AND CONTROL
The second cornerstone of Nautilus is the Deep-space Astrodynamics Research & Technology (DART) group of the Politecnico di Milano, conducting pioneering research in trajectory design, optimization, and the autonomous GNC of deep-space CubeSats.
In 2019, prof. Francesco Topputo was awarded with an ERC consolidator grant for the EXTREMA project, whose goal is to enable CubeSats with autonomous GNC capabilities. The outcomes of the research on autonomous navigation, autonomous guidance and control, and autonomous ballistic capture will eventually be integrated in a fully-functional facility to test interplanetary missions.
Furthermore, the DART group plays a crucial role in the design and operation of ESA's interplanetary CubeSats fleet. This includes Milani, which will be deployed near the binary asteroid system of Didymos and Dimorphos as part of the Hera mission; LUMIO, designed to monitor and analyze meteoroid impacts on the moon's farside by detecting light flashes; and M-ARGO, the pioneering CubeSat that will navigate deep space independently using its low-thrust propulsion system to rendezvous with an asteroid
Credit: ESA-Jacky Huart