Design of the landing guidance for the retro-propulsive vertical landing of a reusable rocket stage

Abstract

Launcher reusability is the most effective way of reducing access to space costs, but remains a great technical challenge for the European aerospace industry. One of the challenges lies in the recovery GNC strategy and algorithms, in particular those of the powered-landing phase, which must enable a precise landing with low fuel margins and significant dispersions. While state-of-the-art solutions for Navigation and control problems can be applied, namely, hybrid Navigation techniques and robust control, for the powered descent guidance problem novel techniques are required to enable on-board optimization, that is necessary to achieve the landing accuracy required to recover the first stage of a launcher. This paper presents the GNC solution currently in development by DEIMOS Space for RETALT (Retro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies), an EU Horizon 2020 funded project for studying launch system re-usability technologies for different classes of vertical take-off vertical-landing vehicles. At first, the architecture of the GNC solution identified for the return mission of the launcher is presented. Then, the paper focuses on the landing phase guidance solution, whose performance is critical to enable the recovery and, therefore, the reusability of the launcher making use of retro-propulsion. The guidance strategy is based on direct optimal control methods via on-board optimization, which is necessary to satisfy the pinpoint landing requirement in a high uncertain dynamic system, such as a booster recovery mission. Online convex optimization and successive convexification are explored for the design of the guidance function. The proposed guidance solution was integrated and tested in a high-fidelity simulator and the performance was preliminary assessed. The guidance assessment allowed selecting the best algorithms to be further consolidated and integrated in an end-to-end GNC solution for the return mission.