Abstract
Saturn’s moon Enceladus is one of the most promising candidates in the solar system for hosting microbial life. Plumes emanating from its south pole are ejecting water directly from the ocean to space. The Enceladus Explorer (EnEx) lander mission concept aims to land near a plume source and deploy a melting probe to sample liquid pockets under the plumes for life. Landing there would be exceptionally challenging due to the rough canyonous topography, polar lighting conditions, a surface covered by superfine snow, and strict planetary protection regulations. In this work the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C) system and operations for the critical approach phase of such a landing are investigated. An advanced GN&C system is defined, comprising extended Kalman filter simultaneous localization and mapping (EKF-SLAM)–based navigation, fuzzy-reasoning-based hazard detection and avoidance, and convex guidance. To verify the landing feasibility and further refine the concept, the system is investigated using a closed-loop simulation tool we created. The performance of each function is analyzed separately with sensitivity and worst-case analyses. A Monte Carlo simulation encompassing all functions is performed to estimate mission success statistics.
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