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About

Brandon Metz is a robotics and space exploration engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, whose work is central to the future of in-situ planetary science. His research focuses on autonomous sampling, subsurface drilling, and perception for extreme environments. Metz made key contributions to the Mars 2020 mission, co-authoring the software system for the Sampling and Caching Subsystem (SCS) testbeds (13 citations), which was critical for validating the rover’s hardware and software under mission-like conditions. He is also the lead developer of the Auto-Gopher-II, an autonomous wireline rotary-hammer ultrasonic drill designed to penetrate deep into planetary subsurfaces with minimal mass and energy—a vital tool for future missions to Mars, Europa, and Enceladus. More recently, Metz has advanced perception for the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) concept, developing principled ICP covariance modeling for navigation in perceptually degraded environments (8 citations). His work bridges the gap between robotic autonomy and the extreme constraints of space exploration, directly enabling NASA’s search for life beyond Earth.