Cecilia Mauceri
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Papers
2
Total Citations
13
H-Index
2
About
Cecilia Mauceri is a pioneering researcher in autonomous space mission operations, with a focus on enabling robotic spacecraft to explore extreme, unpredictable environments. Her work centers on developing onboard scheduling, execution, and decision-making systems that allow missions to operate without continuous human oversight. Mauceri’s major contributions include the design and demonstration of a full autonomy prototype for the Europa Lander Mission Concept, a flagship effort to search for biosignatures on Jupiter’s icy moon. This system tackles immense challenges—limited energy, severe communication blackouts, and high environmental uncertainty—by using a utility-driven approach to dynamically prioritize science and survival tasks. Her 2023 paper on this prototype has garnered 11 citations, while her 2024 follow-up on utility-driven scheduling is already shaping the field. Mauceri’s work is critical to future NASA missions, pushing the boundaries of what autonomous spacecraft can achieve in deep space, and positioning her as a key innovator in the next era of planetary exploration.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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