Lidar Technology Role in Future Robotic and Manned Missions to Solar System Bodies
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Lidar Technology Role in Future Robotic and Manned Missions to Solar System Bodies Rosemary R. Baize, Farzin Amzajerdian, Robert Tolson, John Davidson, Richard W. Powell and Frank Peri NASA Langley Research Center Hampton VA 23681 ABSTRACT Future planetary exploration missions will require safe and precision soft-landing to target scientifically interesting sites near hazardous terrain features, such as escarpments, craters, slopes, and rocks. Although the landing accuracy has steadily improved over time to approximately 35 km for the recent Mars Exploration Rovers due to better approach navigation, a drastically different guidance, navigation and control concept is required to meet future mission requirements. For example, future rovers will require better than 6 km landing accuracy for Mars and better than 1 km for the Moon plus 100 m maneuvering capability to avoid hazards. Laser Radar or Lidar technology can be the key to meeting these objectives since it can provide highresolution 3-D maps of the terrain, accurately measure ground proximity and velocity, and determine atmospheric pressure and wind velocity. These lidar capabilities can enable the landers of the future to identify the pre-selected landing zone and hazardous terrain features within it, determine the optimum flight path, having atmospheric pressure and winds data, and accurately navigate using precision ground proximity and velocity data. This paper examines the potential of lidar technology in future human and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies. A guidance and navigation control architecture concept utilizing lidar sensors will be presented and its operation will be described. The performance and physical requirements of the lidar sensors will be also discussed. INTRODUCTION Robust entry, descent and landing (EDL) systems are critical to enabling the next phase in the exploration of the solar system. Specifically, landing systems that can target safe zones within roving distance of scientifically interesting sites are required for future robotic missions, and even tighter targeting will be required for human missions. There is growing consensus within the scientific community that a sample return mission on Mars (and a precursor demonstration on the Moon) is of sufficiently high priority to warrant system testing [1] of terminal phase hazard avoidance and precision landing technology [2]. The estimated landing accuracy on Mars has steadily improved over time, from within 150 km of the desired target for Mars Pathfinder, to approximately 90 km for Mars Polar Lander, and down to 35 km for the recent Mars Exploration Rovers [3]. To date, most of the improvement in landing accuracy has been due to improvements in approach navigation, which have provided more accurate entries at the top of the atmosphere. Further gains will be limited by our lack of knowledge of the Martian middle atmosphere, such that even with perfect navigation to the top of the atmosphere, landing inaccuracy can still be greater than 10 km. Fut
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