Evaluation of Mars probe positioning using X-ray pulsars, celestial, gravity-aided and ground-based measurements

Abstract Autonomous navigation of the Mars probe is a key step for the survivability of the space mission and the success of the scientific experiments. However, Mars probe positioning has large uncertainty due to imprecise techniques and limited observations. In this paper, several key factors of X-ray Pulsar, Optical Celestial, and Gravity-aided navigational system are investigated by the simulation in term of Nonlinear Kalman Filters. The navigational performances are evaluated to investigate the autonomy, accuracy, and stability of the systems. The numbers and the kinds of X-ray Pulsars detected by the antenna system have significant influence on the accuracy and stability of the X-ray Pulsars Navigation (XNAV) system. The XNAV achieves several hundreds of meters orbit accuracy by scanning PSR B1937 + 21, B1821–24 and B0531 + 21 in Earth-Mars cruise orbit. The improvement of pointing-accuracy of the celestial sensor has less effect on increasing accuracy of the Optical Celestial Navigation (OCN) system. The OCN has relatively lower navigation accuracy with a few hundred kilometers but higher stability. For surface rover positioning, we introduce the Gravity-aided Odometry (GAO) and design two algorithms to verify its navigation ability. The accuracy of GAO approximately equals to the performance of the ground-based Radio Tracking (RT). The potential scientific perspectives of above methods are discussed, which could improve the astrophysical and planetary geodetic study.