Publication Date:
2019-12-20
Description:
Europa, the smallest of Jupiters Galilean moons, is thought to harbor a vast liquid water ocean beneath its icy crust, making it one of the most scientifically intriguing targets for a robotic surface sampling mission in our Solar System. However, autonomously landing a spacecraft safely and precisely on Europa poses unique challenges, such as very little existing high-resolution reconnaissance imagery, a surface expected to be very rough and hazardous over a wide range of scales, an extremely intense ionizing radiation environment, and very limited lander resources for mass and volume. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Intelligent Landing System (ILS) combining four Guidance, Navigation & Control (GN&C) sensing functions velocimetry, altimetry, map-relative localization, and hazard detection that would together enable safe and precise landing on Europas surface. The ILS is a smart sensor system, combining an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a monocular, passive-optical camera, and a light detection and ranging (Li-DAR) sensor with dedicated computing resources as well as an onboard 3D terrain map. The ILS leverages more than a decade of technology development from programs such as the Lander Vision System, currently baselined on the Mars 2020 mission. This paper provides a detailed description of the proposed ILS architecture and concept of operations, as well as select preliminary simulation results to assess performance and robustness.
Keywords:
Spacecraft Design, Testing and Performance
Type:
JPL-CL-CL#17-0517
,
Annual Guidance and Control Conference; Feb 02, 2017 - Feb 08, 2017; Breckenridge, CO; United States
Format:
text
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