Graduate student builds NASA robot that assembles satellites without cameras

Sarah Downs discovered robotics in her Tulsa, Oklahoma middle school through First Lego League and was captivated by NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, as well as the live broadcast of Curiosity's launch in 2011. After her father died in 2015 when she was 13, her mother returned to college to support the family, an experience that made Downs conscious of the need for a secure career. She joined First Robotics in high school and spent her final two years taking engineering courses at Tulsa Tech, a vocational school, while attending high school classes.

Downs earned her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tulsa in 2024 and initially entered the school's master's program expecting to join a NASA robotics project. When government funding delays postponed that project's start, she spent her first graduate year in the university's newly launched Institute for Robotics and Autonomy, developing a robotic arm inspired by her wheelchair-bound grandmother that could identify and place household objects for older people and wheelchair users. When the NASA project secured funding before her sophomore year in 2025, Downs pivoted to her primary thesis work: building a robot capable of the peg-in-hole task—inserting an antenna into a satellite opening—without using cameras.

The challenge is acute in space, where cameras can malfunction or experience communication delays. Instead, Downs developed a force-based insertion process in which the robot loosely grips the antenna and uses a torque sensor on its gripper to "feel" the force feedback, determining the position and orientation of the satellite and antenna relative to each other. The robot then guides the antenna assembly into the target opening and maintains position during adhesion. The work is further complicated by zero gravity: any motion from the robotic arm, especially from increased forces, can cause the satellite to continue moving in that direction. To counter this, Downs performs calculations to direct targeted reverse thrusts that oppose the force of the robot's motions.

Now pursuing her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Downs is completing her doctoral thesis on the project through the university's Robotics and Automation Design Lab, which specializes in machines for extreme environments and collaborates with NASA. Her thesis advisor is Robert Ambrose, a NASA veteran who launched the lab in 2022. Beyond her research, Downs has been active in IEEE since 2020, serving as president of the University of Tulsa's IEEE student branch from 2022 to 2024, during which she increased the executive board from roughly five to 25 members and expanded the branch's event schedule to one every two weeks. After earning her Ph.D., she says she hopes to work for NASA, developing rovers that collect samples from Mars or robotic arms that perform tasks on space stations.

Sarah Downs's career path reflects a deliberate blend of passion and pragmatism. Inspired in her teens by NASA's Mars rovers, she pursued robotics with the understanding that it could provide both intellectual fulfillment and financial security for her family—a priority that crystallized after her father's death in 2015. Her engineering education followed a structured trajectory: she participated in First Lego League and First Robotics as a teenager, completed a dual-enrollment program at Tulsa Tech while in high school, and then pursued electrical engineering at the University of Tulsa, drawn to small systems and electrical components.

Her graduate work demonstrates how robotics problems are often constrained by harsh physical realities. The peg-in-hole task—inserting an antenna into a satellite opening—is conceptually simple but becomes extraordinarily complex in the zero-gravity environment of space, where even small forces from a robotic arm can cause the satellite to drift. By eliminating dependence on cameras, which are vulnerable to malfunction and communication delays in orbit, Downs's force-sensing approach addresses a genuine operational gap. Her work at Texas A&M's Robotics and Automation Design Lab, which specializes in machines for extreme environments and collaborates with NASA, positions her within a research ecosystem directly aligned with her stated goal of eventually working on Mars rovers and space station robotic systems.

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