Anthea Comellini | |
|---|---|
 Comellini in 2025 | |
| Born | 1992 (age 32–33) Italy |
| Alma mater | Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Scientific career | |
| Thesis | Vision-based navigation for autonomous rendezvous with non-cooperative targets (2021) |
| Space career | |
| ESA reserveastronaut | |
| Selection | 2022 ESA Group |
Anthea Comellini (born 1992) is an Italian aerospace engineer and reserve astronaut. Comellini completed a PhD onspace rendezvous at theInstitut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, in France, with aerospace companyThales Alenia Space in 2021. She then worked in space navigation operations for theEuropean Space Agency, and the following year, was hired for research and development at Thales Alenia Space. She was chosen as a reserve astronaut in theEuropean Astronaut Corps in 2022.
Anthea Comellini was born in Italy in 1992.[1] Her mother is a seamstress and her father is an architect.[2] Her parents named her after a character in a television series played byAndie MacDowell, as they wanted a daughter who had the same curly hair as the character and as themselves.[3]
Comellini grew up in the townChiari, in theBrescia province of northern Italy.[4][5] She attendedliceo scientifico cittadino Calini, a high school in Brescia.[6] She initially desired to become a writer, and in high school, she won third prize for a poetry award, thePremio Montale.[3] A competitiveorienteer,[3][7] she participated in the 2011 JuniorWorld Orienteering Championships.[8]
Comellini graduated with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from thePolytechnic University of Milan in 2014.[1][5] In 2017, she earned a master's degree in space engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan, and aDiplôme d'Ingénieur from theInstitut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO), inToulouse, France, as part of a double degree programme, and a master's degree from theParis-Saclay University in signal and image processing andadvanced control.[1][5] She completed a PhD at ISAE-SUPAERO in partnership with an industrial partner, aerospace manufacturerThales Alenia Space, in 2021.[1][9] Her thesis proposed a solution for the "Vision-based navigation for autonomousrendezvous with non-cooperative targets".[10] During the programme, she was a visiting researcher at a laboratory atPolytechnique Montréal, in Canada, for half a year.[1]
After her PhD, and until 2022, Comellini was a flight dynamics engineer in theEuropean Space Agency's mission control centre,European Space Operations Centre, located in Germany where she worked on deep-space navigation forBepiColombo,ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter,Gaia, andMars Express, among other missions.[1]
In 2022, she was hired byThales Alenia Space as an engineer in its research and development department.[1] She was chosen as a reserve in theEuropean Astronaut Corps in the2022 class of astronauts.[1] As part of the reserve, she will continue to work her full-time job as an engineer and will begin training if found necessary for a future space mission.[2] Comellini's work at Thales Alenia Space entails control, guidance, and navigation systems for satellites.[11]
So I grew up in Chiari, a small town in northern Italy, and I enrolled in thePolitecnico di Milano for the aerospace engineer programme when I was 19.
