Experimental Investigations of the Comet Lander Philae Touchdown Dynamics

The comet lander Philae (as part of Europe’s Rosetta mission) is en route to its target, 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. With landing operations coming up at the end of 2014, a partial retesting of the Philae lander’s touchdown system was carried out in spring of 2013. Intensive testing was performed as part of Philae’s design and verification program approximately 10 years ago. However, the new test series specifically addresses touchdown conditions that have been out of capability of the pendulum test facility used at those times. Thus, the follow-up tests focus on touchdown conditions such as asymmetric loads, effects from terrain undulation, and the effect of granular soil mechanics, which could not be studied sufficiently in the original tests. This paper provides insight into the touchdown system of the Philae lander, the characteristics of the used test facility, its weight offloading operating mode, and the specific application to a small-body landing test. The results of the study are presented and d...

[1]  Silvio Schröder,et al.  Recording the PHILAE Touchdown using CASSE: Laboratory Experiments , 2013 .

[2]  Kazuya Yoshida,et al.  Touchdown of the Hayabusa Spacecraft at the Muses Sea on Itokawa , 2006, Science.

[3]  Michael,et al.  Rosetta Lander - after seven years of cruise, prepared for hibernation , 2012 .

[4]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Landing Strategies for Small Bodies Missions - Philae and beyond , 2009 .

[5]  Silvio Schröder,et al.  Footpad-Terrain Interaction Tests with the robotic Landing and Mobility Test Facility (LAMA) , 2011 .

[6]  H. Rosenbauer,et al.  Impact on a comet: Rosetta Lander simulations , 2000 .

[7]  H. Melosh,et al.  Deep Impact: Excavating Comet Tempel 1 , 2005, Science.

[8]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Philae-Lander touchdown dynamics revisited - tests for the upcoming landing preparations , 2013 .

[9]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Rosetta Lander - Implications of Alternative Mission Scenarios , 2003 .

[10]  K. Glassmeier,et al.  Rosetta-ESA's Mission to the Origin of the Solar System , 2009 .

[11]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Landing preparations for the Rosetta comet Lander Philae , 2013 .

[12]  U. J. Blanchard.  Evaluation of a full-scale lunar-gravity simulator by comparison of landing-impact tests of a full-scale and a 1/6-scale model , 1968 .

[13]  Lutz Richter,et al.  A Vehicle Dynamics Test Facility For Planetary Surface Mobility , 2009 .

[14]  L. Richter,et al.  The putative mechanical Strength of comet surface material applied to landing on a comet , 2009 .

[15]  Stephan Ulamec,et al.  Philae Landing Test at the Landing and Mobility Test Facility (LAMA) , 2013 .