Study on landing response control of planetary exploration spacecraft using advanced G-MEID

The safe and precise landing control method of planetary exploration spacecraft is indispensable to achieve its missions. However, the landing methods used in previous missions have some problems such as high complexity. To improve them, the authors’ have focused on the momentum exchange principles and adopted momentum exchange impact dampers (MEIDs) that absorb the controlled object’s momentum to extra masses close to the object. This extra mass is called damper mass. Some kinds of MEIDs have been introduced; for example, this paper shows Upper-MEID (U-MEID) that launches the damper mass upward, Lower-MEID (L-MEID) that drops the damper mass downward, and Generalized-MEID (G-MEID) consisting of U-MEID and L-MEID. The authors’ previous paper shows the effectiveness of G-MEID. The purpose of this paper is to introduce its improved version called G-MEID-A (G-MEID-Advanced). G-MEID-A can realize downsizing of the damper mass and more effective momentum exchange by tuning of momentum exchange timing. Simulation investigation verifies that the G-MEID-A has some advantages against the rebound reduction of the spacecraft and robustness against some variable conditions.