Planetary exploration has fascinated me since early childhood. I aspired to be an astronaut until I discovered my passion for robotics during my undergraduate degree. I am currently a senior PhD student and would like to work on the development of robot autonomy for space exploration, allowing us to learn more about our universe and our place in it.As a visiting student researcher (JVSRP) at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), I had the incredible opportunity to learn about, and aid in the development of, the ground mobility subsystem of the Sample Recovery Helicopters in the Mars Sample Return mission.I am pursuing my PhD at the Australian Centre for Robotics, working on dynamically-stable traversability of unstructured terrain for bipedal robots, aiming to validate the work on a Cassie (developed by Agility Robotics).My undergraduate honours thesis was based on research conducted at JPL as a JVSRP as part of Team CoSTAR in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. It is available here: https://cutt.ly/tara-bartlett-undergrad-thesis.I have significant experience in leadership and international collaborations in research projects and societies at university and in school. I am passionate about inspiring the next generation of engineers through outreach and greatly enjoy mentoring.