Future planetary missions will increasingly depend on highly autonomous robotic systems capable of navigating, exploring, and making decisions with minimal human supervision. This thesis focuses on advanced astrodynamics and planetary robotics technologies inspired by ongoing developments at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
The student will investigate trajectory planning, autonomous navigation, terrain-aware guidance, and robotic decision-making for future planetary missions. Possible topics include autonomous rover mobility, orbital-to-surface mission planning, AI-assisted navigation, localization under uncertain terrain conditions, cooperative robotic exploration, or guidance and control for planetary landing and proximity operations. Particular emphasis will be placed on robustness under communication delays, uncertain gravity environments, limited onboard computational power, and dynamic terrain interactions.
The research will combine nonlinear dynamics, astrodynamics, robotics, optimization, computer vision, and AI-based autonomy, leveraging JPL expertise developed through missions such as Perseverance, Ingenuity, Mars Sample Return, and future autonomous exploration architectures. The work may involve simulation, digital twins, navigation algorithms, control-system design, or validation on robotic testbeds inspired by JPL operational concepts.
