Adriana Mitchell
Adriana Mitchell is a PhD candidate in aeronautics and astronautics whose research is centered on autonomous visual navigation for spacecraft. Visual navigation is a powerful tool for planetary landings but is restricted in its application due to its susceptibility to variations in illumination conditions. To address this challenge, Adriana is developing algorithms for robust navigation under variable illumination conditions, focusing specifically on terrain-relative navigation during planetary entry, descent, and landing. Supported by her second MathWorks Fellowship, Adriana is collaborating with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to apply her algorithms to Lunar and Martian image datasets. Her approach involves matching terrain features that remain constant throughout the day, thereby enabling the real-time descent imagery to be localized to an a-priori map with different lighting. Consequently, image alignment can be maintained, ensuring safe and precise spacecraft landings. MathWorks products, including MATLAB’s Image Processing Toolbox, have been pivotal in her work. By offering new approaches for safe and precise spacecraft landings on planetary bodies, Adriana’s research has strong potential to advance aerospace engineering and space exploration.