My current broad focus in graduate research is increasing spacecraft navigational resiliency. This can be broken down into two, somewhat overlapping, topics
Missed Thrust Resilient Trajectory Design:
Low thrust spacecraft, which may be required to thrust for months to years at a time, are susceptible to missed thrust events (MTE). The occurrence of these MTEs are inherently random and can be caused by anything from a software glitch to a micrometeoroid strike. This work is focused on designing trajectories resilient to MTEs and opens up exciting possibilities for the design of MTE resilient trajectories.
Neural Network Based Optimal Control:
Designing spacecraft trajectories often boils down to solving a computationally expensive optimal control problem. Spacecraft often have limited onboard computing capabilities, which requires them to rely on ground-based trajectory design. This work is focused on using computationally lightweight Neural Networks to approximate the solution to an optimal control problem in real-time and opens up exciting possibilities in the realm of spacecraft autonomy.