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Completed TRL 6 (started at 4, targeting 6)
Astrobotic proposes to mature its Autolanding System (the AAS) from TRL 4 to 6 and evaluates performance through a series of tests on an sRLV. The AAS is a complete system for GPS-denied navigation, achieving higher precision, lower cost, and easier mission integration than any government or commercial alternative. Astrobotic will demonstrate the technology by autonomously landing a Masten Xaero propulsive lander within a 100m radius while sensing, mapping, and avoiding hazards of 25cm and greater. The AAS fills an unmet need for precise, safe autonomous landings, for both NASA and the commercial space industry.
Problem Statement
NASA's current missions land blindly, targeting large error ellipses in statistically safe terrain. For example, the Curiosity rover targeted a 19x6 km ellipse of benign Martian terrain. While adequate for missions that explore a general region of Mars or the Moon, this level of precision is insufficient for future NASA and commercial ambitions that demand arrival at specific targets. The AAS can deliver payload to within 100 meters of the chosen destination while autonomously avoiding hazards as small as 25cm, enabling precise missions to resources and exploratory targets such as crater rims and caves; serial visits to establish and sustain habitats; and revisiting cached samples gathered on previous missions.
Technology Maturation
The project proposed by Astrobotic will mature AAS technologies to TRL 6 through end-to-end flight testing on Masten's Xaero vehicle. This sRLV platform is an optimal test environment to mature the AAS to TRL 6. Flights on high-altitude propulsive landers enable unique views unavailable at lower altitudes. These views are necessary to fully test map registration and evaluate transition from map registration to visual-inertial pose filtering.
Potential users are Precursor Robotic Missions and NASA ALHAT program as an alternate to current technology, AAS is optimized for small robotic landers and utilizes scanning LIDAR instead of flash LIDAR.
Future Customers
The trajectories to be flown match the terminal phase of planetary landings, which is necessary for validating hazard detection/avoidance and trajectory planning approaches. Prior work at Carnegie Mellon University has demonstrated closed-loop, autonomous landings of helicopters with LIDAR hazard detection and visual odometry-aided pose estimation. The AAS fills an unmet need for precise, safe autonomous landings, for both NASA and the commercial space industry.
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