Recent development of autonomous GNC technologies for small celestial body descent and landing

Abstract

As small celestial body exploration advances, higher requirements with regard to system safety and landing precision are proposed for future landing and sample return missions. However, due to limited prior information about the target, the complex dynamics environment, and significant time-delay, performing a descent and landing on the small body surface is challenging. Among all the techniques required for achieving a safe landing, onboard guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) is of paramount importance in determining mission success. In this paper, a systematic survey of the autonomous GNC technologies for descent and landing on small bodies is carried out. First, based on an analysis of the technical challenges in the process, an overview of typical small body landing and sample return missions is given. Then, an elaboration of the state-of-the-art GNC technologies is presented. Specifically, autonomous navigation methods in unknown environments with highly-nonlinear dynamics are introduced. Descent guidance and control algorithms that take into account landing performance optimization and system robustness against model uncertainties are discussed. Touchdown dynamics and control methods proposed for precise and safe surface contact under weak gravity are analyzed. And safe strategies for onboard detected emergencies such as collision threats and system malfunctions are explained. Besides the prevalent methods, innovative techniques with respect to observability-based optimization, edge curve matching, online landing site selection, collision probability-based hazard avoidance, and trajectory curvature guidance proposed for improving system safety and landing performance are elucidated. At last, based on the growing system autonomy and operational complexity demands, a prospect of future research directions for small body GNC technologies is given.