Future lunar missions will need to land near specific resources that are located in potentially hazardous terrain. This capability will be possible when landers are equipped with the ability to automatically recognize the location of the desired landing site while detecting landing hazards during the final descent to the surface. Two critical technologies that must be developed to enable this capability are an active sensor for measuring the topography of the landing site and terrain analysis algorithms. To prove that these technologies are ready for flight, they must be tested using both field tests and high fidelity Monte Carlo simulations of lunar landing. In addition the sensing and terrain analysis algorithms must be tested in the field to prove their performance in a relevant environment and to validate software models using in simulation. The final phase of testing takes place in a Hardware-in-the-Loop testbed where the landing dynamics, lunar environment, sensors and software are all present for full up real-time system testing.
This multi-year year task is part of the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) program lead by Johnson Space Center (JSC) with support from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Langley Research Center (LaRC), the Charles Stark Draper Labs (CSDL) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). JPL is the lead center for field testing and terrain analysis algorithms, with responsibility for field test systems, terrain and environment models, hazard detection algorithms, hazard relative navigation algorithms and terrain relative navigation algorithms.
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