Research

My research is in nonlinear dynamical systems and the control of agents within such systems. The problems I find most compelling sit at the boundary of what is mathematically tractable and what is physically meaningful — trajectory optimization under chaotic dynamics, autonomous proximity operations where interacting boundary layers or gravitational flows make classical methods fragile, and multi-agent systems that must act safely under uncertainty.

Concretely, this means work in stochastic trajectory optimization, differential game theory for spacecraft pursuit-evasion and cooperative maneuvering, nonlinear system identification, and computational astrodynamics. Application domains include cislunar space operations, very low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellite maintenance, and — from earlier work — the long-term stability of compact planetary systems.

Featured Publications

Orbital Stability of Closely-Spaced Four-planet Systems

A systematic study of four-planet orbital lifetimes, showing how mean motion resonances and initial conditions drive stability — with implications for planetary system age …

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Bennet Outland
Differential Game Theory

Differential games formalize multi-agent problems where each agent optimizes a continuous-time objective subject to shared dynamics and the decisions of others. In the spacecraft context this captures pursuit-evasion scenarios, contested proximity operations, and cooperative rendezvous where the objectives of different agents are in tension.

My PhD work develops theory and algorithms for these settings — focusing on tractable solution methods that scale to the dynamics and constraints encountered in cislunar and low-Earth-orbit environments.

Computational Astrodynamics
My astrodynamics work spans two threads. During my time at AFRL, I focused on cislunar rendezvous — developing efficient trajectory generation methods for autonomous deputy-chief spacecraft operations, and building spacecraft modeling and control libraries in Julia. Earlier, at NASA Ames, I investigated the long-term stability of compact planetary systems using high-throughput N-body simulations, which led to three forthcoming journal publications.
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