Future missions will not be executed as fixed plans. They will adapt.
As space systems become more distributed, resource-constrained, and autonomous, mission success depends on whether spacecraft can respond to changing environments, evolving objectives, and incomplete information without losing alignment with human intent.
Our lab studies mission-level autonomy: how to define mission capabilities, make onboard decisions under uncertainty, and design space systems that remain trustworthy, efficient, and operationally meaningful as they adapt.
1.
We develop computational models of mission capability for spacecraft and constellations whose behavior changes over time. Rather than treating missions as fixed plans, we study adaptive capability through resilience, responsiveness, coordination, coverage, and graceful degradation under uncertainty.
2.
We design onboard decision-making systems that can act under uncertainty while remaining understandable to human operators. Our work emphasizes interpretable decision traces, operator-aligned constraints, and trusted autonomy in operation.
3.
We investigate perturbation-aware control methods that treat weak forces and environmental effects as control authority for guidance and adaptive mission execution. This enables new strategies for resource-limited spacecraft and distributed space systems.
SpaceAGORA
SpaceAGORA is our high-fidelity environment for evaluating mission dynamics, autonomy, and multi-agent coordination. It enables digital experimentation for adaptive missions before those systems ever fly.
Explore SpaceAGORAOur research is motivated by high-value problems in: