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About

Cansu Demirel-Floyd is an emerging researcher at the forefront of planetary cave exploration, contributing meaningfully to one of space science's most exciting and rapidly evolving frontiers. Her work spans astrobiology, planetary geology, and robotic exploration, with a particular focus on subsurface environments across the solar system as potential harbors for life and future human activity. Her most influential contribution, "Fundamental Science and Engineering Questions in Planetary Cave Exploration" (2022), has garnered 38 citations and synthesizes decades of cave science into a modern framework informed by contemporary satellite data and instrumentation. Complementing this, her 2021 roadmap paper on science and technology requirements for solar system cave exploration has helped establish a unified, cross-disciplinary research agenda for the community. Perhaps her most mission-oriented work involves the Mars Astrobiological Cave and Internal Habitability Explorer (MACIE), a New Frontiers mission concept she has co-developed to investigate Martian lava tubes as windows into subsurface habitability — without the need for drilling. MACIE directly addresses NASA and Decadal Survey priorities, leveraging advances in autonomous robotics and in-situ analysis. Demirel-Floyd's research is shaping how humanity will explore the hidden worlds beneath planetary surfaces.