Autonomous Lunar Lander Hazard Detection and Avoidance System

The Vision for Space Exploration includes plans to send humans to the moon by 2020 and develop a lunar outpost thereafter. The plans include both crewed vehicles as well as un-crewed cargo vehicles. Advanced enabling technologies are therefore required for surface hazard detection and avoidance; terrain and hazard relative navigation; and optimized guidance and control to place human-rated vehicles and cargo-carrying vehicles safely and repeatedly on the lunar surface under a wide range of operating conditions. Northrop Grumman is actively pursuing these technologies. The on-going efforts include a large trade-space encompassing sensors (passive and active), landing trajectories, situational awareness algorithms and software, terrain relative navigation (TRN), hazard relative navigation (HRN), and related guidance and control algorithms. Northrop Grumman developed an end-to-end simulation of the lunar landing task encompassing a physics-based multi-sensor simulation, hazard detection and avoidance software, and terrain relative navigation and guidance software to support the trade-space analysis. Northrop Grumman has also created a simulated lunar surface at its desert facility in Tejone pass which includes artificial and natural craters, sloped surfaces, and rocks of various sizes. Flight tests were conducted using fixed wing and rotary wing vehicles with two different flash LIDAR subsystems flying at various altitudes and trajectories over this simulated lunar surface. The data collected during these flight tests were input into the Hazard Detection Algorithm to automatically detect the hazards on the si mulated lunar surface. This flight test demonstration program assessed the viability of the end-to-end design concept of the Autonomous Lunar Landing System (ALLS).