Magalhães Oliveira, Ana Beatriz (German Aerospace Center (DLR)), Krüger, Hans (Germany Aerospace Center (DLR)), Theil, Stephan (DLR)

Feature-Based Optical Navigation for Lunar Landings

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Spacecraft dynamics and control 2" (ThA3), Thursday, April 4, 2019, 14:00−14:30, BL281.2

5th CEAS Conference on Guidance, Navigation and Control, April 3-5, 2019, Milano, Italy

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 18, 2024

Abstract

For space exploration, reducing the size of landing ellipses, increases the access to areas of scientific interest. This can be achieved with improved GNC systems. Since the exclusive use of IMUs is insufficient for Pinpoint Landing, optical navigation is being explored as a solution.The method developed in this work is based on image features matched between a pre-built database and the landing images captured in real-time. The algorithm was tested with data from DLR's TRON laboratory, namely images of a terrain model representative of the lunar surface and the associated ground-truth.Provided sufficient image area, the navigation solution averaged around 1% of the Line Of Sight (LOS) distance and had a maximum value of around 3% of the LOS distance (apart from clear outliers).