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Biography
Giovanni Vulpetti received his Ph.D. in plasma physics in 1973. Subsequently, he specialized in Astrodynamics and Advanced Space Propulsion. He wrote many tens of scientific papers about Astrodynamics, Advanced Propulsion concepts, and Interstellar Flight studies, with particular regard to matter-antimatter annihilation propulsion. In 1979, he joined Telespazio SpA (Rome, Italy). From 1995 to 2011, he has attended the committee for Lunar Base & Mars exploration of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He has been involving in Solar-Photon Sailing since 1992. In the 1990s, he found out new types of sailcraft trajectories and published his theory mainly on Acta Astronautica, JPL workshops, and IAA symposia. In 1994, he was elected Full Member of IAA. In spring 1997, he was a consultant at ESA/ESTEC about the solar-sail mission concept Daedalus. In 1979-2004, he contributed to 11 Italian and European space programs. In 2001, he was a consultant at NASA/MSFC for the NASA Interstellar Probe. In the course of two decades, he accomplished some large computer codes devoted to mission analysis & trajectory optimization via rockets and/or solar-sails. In the 90s, he was a member of the IAA committee for small satellites and, consequently, he participated in the design of Telespazio TemiSat (launched in August 1993). During 2006-2007, he joined Galilean Plus (Rome, Italy) as chief scientist, and participated in the program of the Italian Space Agency for lunar explorations. To date, he has published about 120 research papers and reports. He was a COSPAR-Associate in 2002-2007. In 2009 and 2014, he served as managing guest editor of Acta Astronautica special issues. He wrote the book Fast Solar Sailing, Astrodynamics of Special Sailcraft Trajectories, Space Technology Library 30 (Springer, 2012). He co-authored the first and second editions of the book Solar Sails: A Novel approach to Interplanetary Travel (Springer, 2008, 2014) . He authored the second chapter of the book Beyond the Boundary (The Initiative for Interstellar Studies, 2014). In October 2015, he was invited lecturer on in-Space Propulsion at the Aerospace Dept. of the University of Pisa (Italy). Since spring 2013, he is a senior guest lecturer on the Physics of in-Space Propulsion at the Dept. of Astronautical, Electric and Energy Engineering of the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.