The Madrid university called Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (shortened to UC3M) offers its students a yearly cycle of technical lectures to broaden their knowledge of various matters. For several days at the beginning of the academic year 2017/18 several expert speakers addressed a wide range of themes such as SmartCities, Industry 4.0, Machine Learning, Data Science and Wireless Technology.

On 6 April, students from the aerospace engineering honors degree and the university’s master degree in aeronautical engineering attended the space-engineering lecture given by Emanuele Di Sotto, Head of GMV’s SPS Entry, Descent, Landing and Launchers section and member of the prestigious International Academy of Astronautics (IAA).

In his lecture on launch vehicles Emanuele explained the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) systems, drawing from his actual experience with launchers like Ariane 5 and VEGA. He also highlighted the new breakthroughs and trends in this field, such as microlaunchers and their retrieval, focusing on the case of a Spanish start-up PLD Space and its imminent ARION 1 and 2, reusable rockets with a groundbreaking liquid fuel engine.