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About

Tommaso Rivellini is a pioneering aerospace engineer whose career has been defined by solving one of space exploration’s most formidable challenges: safely landing heavy payloads on Mars. His primary research areas encompass entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems, supersonic decelerator technologies, and planetary mission architecture. Rivellini’s most significant contribution came through his leadership on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, where he helped design and validate the revolutionary “sky crane” landing system that successfully delivered the Curiosity rover to the Martian surface. His foundational overview papers on the MSL EDL system have garnered over 250 combined citations, establishing him as a leading authority in the field. Beyond MSL, Rivellini has advanced the state of the art through the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator project, developing and testing larger parachutes and inflatable aerodynamic decelerators (SIAD-R) that enable access to higher-altitude landing sites. His work directly addresses the limitations of Viking-era technologies, providing mission planners with expanded options for future robotic and human Mars exploration. Rivellini’s contributions have fundamentally reshaped how engineers approach the critical final minutes of a Mars landing.