Autonomous navigation and guidance scheme for precise and safe planetary landing

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the autonomous navigation and guidance scheme for future precise and safe planetary landing.Design/methodology/approachAutonomous navigation and guidance schemes are proposed based on inertial measurement unit (IMU) and optical navigation sensors for precise and safe landing of spacecrafts on the moon and planetary bodies. First, vision‐aided inertial navigation scheme is suggested to achieve precise relative navigation; second, two autonomous obstacle detection algorithms, based on grey image from optical navigation camera and digital elevation map form light detection and ranging sensor, respectively, are proposed; and third, flowchart of automatic obstacle avoidance maneuver is also given out.FindingsThis paper finds that the performance of the proposed scheme precedes the traditional planetary landing navigation and guidance mode based on IMU and deep space network.Research limitations/implicationsThe presented schemes need to be further validated by the mathematical simulations and hardware‐in‐loop simulations, and then they can be used in the real flight missions.Practical implicationsThe presented schemes are applicable to both future planetary pin‐point landing missions and sample return missions with little modification.Originality/valueThis paper presents the new autonomous navigation and guidance scheme in order to achieve the precise and safe planetary landing.