Embry-Riddle Wins Annual Capture the Satellite Competition at AIAA SciTech Forum
ORLANDO – A team of students from the XDLab Group at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has won the third annual Capture the Satellite competition, a game that teaches how to control a spacecraft to avoid obstacles and safely rendezvous with another spacecraft that needs service, on 15 January at AIAA SciTech Forum 2026.
A collaboration between AIAA and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the competition features a problem in which students must determine how they will maneuver, approach, and capture a malfunctioning satellite, even with obstacles in the way. Embry-Riddle beat out 51 other teams and two other finalists. The other finalists were:
- AVS Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, 2nd Place
- UPM-MIT – Universidad Politécnica de Madrid & MIT, 3rd Place
This year, students had four months to work on the “lady-bandit-bodyguard problem.” In this situation, the teams had to use software and algorithms to navigate and control a satellite, called the bandit, that had to contend with another satellite (the bodyguard of the target, chasing the team’s satellite) – on their way to rescuing the target, or lady (the satellite), explained Ross Allen, Technical Staff Member in the Tactical Autonomy Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, who runs the program. Winners receive a trophy, and bragging rights, Allen said.
Students had three days to come up with a program for the finals. “We’ve tried to generate a really challenging, difficult problem here,” Allen noted. “From the participants’ perspective, they’re in control of one satellite and they are interacting with two other satellites. They’re trying to pursue this malfunctioned satellite while evading a third satellite, all operating in close proximity.”
Surprisingly, the winning team did not rely on an AI approach but used classical orbital mechanics.
“We thought just using AI and ML might be risky, because it’s hard to explain what the AI is telling you to do,” said Luca Sportelli, a Ph.D. candidate who is a team co-captain.
Co-captain Tyler Barr, an undergraduate aerospace engineering major, said the exercise was extremely helpful, as he was learning in class many of the theories needed for the game.
“There are so many different sides to it. There’s the software side. There are the orbital mechanics. I was learning in class, at the same time I was learning this. So I was able to apply the stuff from class to this competition. And I thought that was really cool.”
The exercise helps spur research and development of algorithms and AI agents for autonomous control of spacecraft, Allen said. The platform is based on the Kerbal Space Program, which provides a full-featured physics engine for low Earth orbital mechanics. The problems the students are solving can be applied in the real world, especially as the number of satellites in orbit increase.
“I see it as very much a kind of real-world experience developing autonomous systems. In particular, it’s giving them experience working on a very nascent problem of space autonomy,” Allen continued. “The underlying algorithms they’re developing that would drive that control system, the underlying theory, would be highly applicable to the real world.”
Teams started working on the problem in August 2025, with the semifinal round in December. “They’ve had all this time to figure out how to outsmart me, how to outsmart my software, but then I released something new that they haven’t seen, this third satellite. I was hoping that they’ve created something that is more robust, that’s not really brittle and fails as soon as it sees something new.”
Indeed, that’s exactly what the Embry-Riddle team has done, evading the guard satellite and capturing the lady target.
