Dear Reader,

Aerotecnica Missili & Spazio has decided to host a special edition dedicated to the PEGASUS Student Conference (PSC) held at the University of Glasgow on April 10–11, 2019.

PEGASUS (Partnership of a European Group of Aeronautics and Space UniversitieS) is the partnership of the best European aerospace universities and currently has 28 members in 11 different European countries. Today, more than 2000 aeronautical engineers graduate from the member institutions of PEGASUS each year.

The objective of PEGASUS is to offer highly relevant educational and research programs and thereby attract the best students and scientists. Coordinated developments, exchange of staff and students and innovation is the basis on which these objectives are achieved.

The PSC is reserved for Masters students who have graduated from the PEGASUS Universities not more than 1 year before the date of the conference. It offers them a unique opportunity to get together, to exchange experiences, traditions and to create opportunities at international level.

The Conference is organized on the basis of competitive selection. The first selection is operated at local level since each University is allowed to present not more than three papers.

The written papers are then evaluated by two professors from different countries to the author(s) of the paper, recognized as experts in the covered topic.

The final, combined score is obtained after the oral presentation at the conference. Again two professors from different countries, and different from the evaluators of the written paper, are asked to evaluate the oral presentation in terms of the quality of the delivery, the capacity to answer questions and comments, and so on.

The paper, and the author(s), with the highest combined score given by the four Professors, is awarded the first prize as winner of the PSC.

As a further opportunity offered and sponsored by the network, the winner can participate in an international conference, freely selected by them, for presenting the winning paper.

Starting from the Glasgow University edition and thanks to the interest and the opportunity offered by the Editorial Board of Aerotecnica Missili & Spazio journal, edited by Springer Nature, a special issue is dedicated to this conference, recognizing the importance and the credit that the PSC has achieved in the aerospace scientific community. All the papers were revised by new referees, according to the high-quality standards of the Journal.

On behalf of all the PEGASUS Universities and their representatives, we express our gratitude to Aerotecnica Missili & Spazio for hosting the best papers in their special issue and we hope to maintain this link for the future editions of the PSC.

Conference Organizer

Prof. Marco Vezza

Conference Chairman

Prof. Francesco Marulo