USC’s Space Engineering Research Center is giving students hands-on experience designing, building and operating spacecraft, highlighted by the successful launch of the student-built MAVERIC CubeSat, which is testing autonomous spacecraft technologies and AI applications in orbit. Research professor David Barnhart said the program’s close partnerships with industry and faculty provide students with real flight experience and professional engineering training, creating a strong pipeline to aerospace employers such as SpaceX. SERC is also advancing AI-enabled spacecraft by using satellite data to train reinforcement learning models on the ground and upload improved control algorithms, while emphasizing that autonomous systems will work alongside—not replace—human operators. Looking ahead, the center is pursuing ambitious projects including a kilometer-wide virtual space telescope, autonomous tentacle-like robotic systems for space operations, and new NASA Astrobee collaborations.
