Control System Modeling and Design for a Mars Flyer, MACH-1 Competition

Mars science missions would benefit from the ability to acquire high resolution images of the Martian surface, as well as sensor coverage from other sensors. A robotic aircraft on Mars has been proposed to carry these instruments. The atmosphere and weak Martian gravity make the plane equivalent to a very high altitude aircraft on the Earth. The MACH-1 challenge is a design contest to model, simulate, and design the control system for this future Mars flyer. The design specifications are used to create a SIMULINK full six degree of freedom model, which is validated with open loop simulations. Trim conditions are used to generate perturbation models for control loop design, and output regulator linear quadratic regulator design is used to generate a gain matrix for straight and level flight. The generated model is unstable, and the control design developed cannot stabilize the non-linear model.