Mario Panelli holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Naval and Quality Management Engineering from the University of Naples, Federico II. He currently works in CIRA (Italian Aerospace Research Center), being affiliated with the Propulsion and Exploration Division as researcher of the Space Propulsion Laboratory. He has worked as a researcher and a project and system engineer in different national and international projects in the topics of methane-based propulsion systems, hybrid propulsion, solid propulsion, and electric propulsion. Actually, he is involved in the CIRA electric propulsion projects as a project engineer and researcher. His most recent activities are associated with the design and testing of orifice hollow cathodes (OHCs) and hall effect thrusters (HETs), plasma modelling, and preliminary design of gridded ion thrusters (GITs), helicon plasma thrusters (HPTs), and HEMPT.