Optimized Entry and Powered Descent Guidance for Precision Planetary Landing

A human-Mars mission requires the delivery of a high payload from the entry interface at supersonic speed to a preflight-designated surface location at near-zero speed with pinpoint precision. The supersonic retro-propulsion system to decelerate the vehicle at supersonic speed consumes significant amount of propellant. It becomes a challenging task to achieve high precision landing while minimizing fuel consumption during descent phase. This project aims to develop a highly implementable guidance approach that optimizes the end-to-end complete entry, powered descent, and landing trajectories in real-time toward the fuel-optimal and precise landing. In pursuit of this goal, three essential research objectives will be investigated, including high fidelity and computationally efficient mission modeling with independent control maneuvers, fast converging online optimization algorithm, and virtual simulation and experimental verification, which will jointly contribute to the advances of fuel-optimal entry and powered descent guidance algorithms to enable precise landing. Furthermore, the proposed end-to-end mission planning strategy is applicable to multi-phase space tasks, which is beneficial to onboard planning of challenging space missions.

This effort will develop advanced entry and powered descent guidance method for fuel-optimal and precise planetary landing: create unified models incorporating direct force control and end-to-end complete onboard mission optimization. The proposed research has high fidelity models, improved flexibility in optimization, and highly implementable algorithms.

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