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About

Anna Mittelholz is a planetary scientist whose work bridges robotic exploration, geophysics, and the search for habitable environments beyond Earth. Her research focuses on Mars and the Moon, with key contributions to sample return mission planning, instrument deployment, and the exploration of subsurface lava tubes. She was a central figure in the CanMars Mars Sample Return analogue mission (33 citations), which simulated end-to-end sample collection and caching operations critical to future Mars missions. As part of the NASA InSight team, Mittelholz contributed to the successful robotic arm activities that deployed seismometers and heat-flow probes on the Martian surface (17 citations). More recently, she has led the LunarLeaper mission concept (4 and 2 citations), proposing a small legged robot to explore lunar pits and access subsurface lava tubes—potential shelters for future astronauts and windows into the Moon’s volcanic history. Her work is notable for combining hands-on mission operations with forward-looking robotic concepts, making her a rising voice in planetary exploration.