Prof. Luciano Iess

Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Luciano Iess is a Full Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. His research interests are in deep space tracking systems, tests of relativistic gravity, and planetary geodesy. He is a science team member of the Cassini and Juno missions, and Principal Investigator of the radio science and geodesy experiments on the ESA missions BepiColombo to Mercury and JUICE to the Galilean moons. He has served in the ESA advisory structure since 1997. His main scientific achievements are an accurate test of general relativity with the spacecraft Cassini, the discovery of Titan’s internal ocean, and the detection of a water reservoir in the southern polar region of Enceladus. He led the development of the ESA Delta-Differential One-way Ranging system for precise navigation of deep space probes.