Analysis and prospect of guidance aspects for Mars precision landing

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) has successfully landed Curiosity rover on Mars, and this creates a new situation for Mars precision landing. Taking the MSL mission for example, the guidance scheme and its development trend of entry, descent and landing on Mars are analyzed in this paper. In order to land Martian rovers on high elevation regions and hazardous regions, several primary problems that the guidance system is faced with are summarized. And based on the need of the autonomous and adaptive technique development and the problems that the guidance system is faced with, key techniques of guidance aspect for future Mars landing mission are presented, and also, the potential of the related techniques for applying to the practical engineering is prospected.