JPL DESCANSO - Deep Space Communications and Navigation Center of Excellence

Biography

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michela Muñoz Fernàndez

Michela Muñoz Fernández received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California) in 2001 and 2005, respectively. She previously earned an M.S. in Space Studies from the International Space University (France), an M.S.E.E., and two B.Sc. degrees summa cum laude in electrical engineering and telecommunications engineering in Madrid (Spain). Her Ph.D. thesis was based on a coherent-optical-array receiver for pulse-position modulated signals under atmospheric turbulence for deep-space communications.


Dr. Muñoz Fernández has been working on flight, payload, instrument operations, telecommunications, and ground systems engineering for NASA and ESA missions (Orion, Juno, SIM, Deep Space 1, ROSETTA) since 1998. She is the principal investigator of the Juno mission-modeling task for NASA HQ, a task manager in the information architecture standards area at JPL, and also works on DSN related research applied to link complexity and RF/optical communications.


She is a Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) Free Space Laser Communications Program Committee member, and she has been a chair of sessions on Free-Space Link Performance. She was selected in 2008 to the first rounds of the European Space Agency's astronaut program. She won two Amelia Earhart Awards in 2002 and 2004 respectively, plus other ESA and NASA awards.


Co-Author of Chapter 5 from Volume 13 of the Deep-Space Communications and Navigation Series:

Deep Space 1


Co-Author of the following article of the DESCANSO Design & Performance Summary Series - Telecommunications: