Student Name: Marco Serapiglia

Advisor: Dr. Dimitri Mavris

Milestone: MS Thesis Final Examination (Defense)

Degree Program: Aerospace Engineering

Title: Reentry Logistics: a Methodology for the Design of High-Cadence LEO-to-Earth Supply Chains

Abstract: Access to space is becoming cheaper and more frequent, but what about the way back? Reentering still happens at low frequency, yet applications from in-space manufacturing to commercial space stations converge on a common need: bringing mass down from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) reliably, safely, and frequently. Thus, with reentry technologies established and operators committing to weekly or monthly returns, scaling returns from a sporadic event to recurring traffic is an operational challenge, rather than a technological one. What distinguishes the resulting LEO-to-Earth supply chain from conventional logistics is entry, descent, and landing (EDL), whose physics and regulation introduce unique costs and constraints. To our knowledge, no framework couples EDL trajectory analysis with fleet logistics and ground investments. This thesis addresses that gap for a single operator that returns a growing and heterogeneous volume of payloads, and maximizes its profit over a multi-year horizon by acting on its portfolio acquisition trajectory: fleet, landing sites, and refurbishing capacities. The methodology analyzes mission legs, including EDL; simulates portfolios, following each vehicle's operations and interactions; and searches for the best one through a genetic algorithm, in a simulation-based optimization. According to our model, the operator is expected to converge, across most of the scenarios explored, to few large vehicle types and several landing sites, over which traffic spreads as demand grows. In the baseline scenario, the main vehicle type is a large mid lift-to-drag ratio (L/D) architecture, while high L/D vehicles find a niche in time sensitive payloads through more landing opportunities. Removing congestion or deorbit limits makes these vehicles disappear and traffic spread less, which suggests that such couplings must be considered. Under increasing penalties on disruption to air traffic and population, the operator first moves its landings, at little cost, then switches to more controllable vehicles, and finally enters the market later. These results, which produce a first map of predicted high-cadence LEO-to-Earth traffic, can inform commercial actors and regulators. An efficient and high-cadence way back from space is yet to be built, and this thesis is a first study of it.

Date and time: 2026-11-18, 1:00 - 3:00 pm

Location: CoVE

Committee:
Dr. Dimitri Mavris (advisor), School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Koki Ho, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Tristan Sarton du Jonchay, School of Aerospace Engineering (until August 2026, when they left GT)