Autonomous optical navigation for landing on asteroids

Purpose - In order to succeed in landing asteroids, good accuracy autonomous navigation is absolutely necessary. Aims to describe a new autonomous navigation algorithm. Design/methodology/approach - First, gray images of asteroid surface are acquired by optical navigation camera, and nature feature points are detected and tracked autonomously. Second, the directional vector from spacecraft to the center of each feature point can be computed from the image coordinates in camera focal plane. Then, LIDAR/LRF is directed to three feature points and the distances from spacecraft to feature points are obtained. Last, the relative position vector from spacecraft to the target asteroid is reconstructed base on measurement outputs of navigation cameras and laser light radar (laser range finder). Findings - Suppose the initial conditions presented in this paper, the autonomous optical navigation position error and velocity error are less than 1m and 0.1 m/s, respectively; this navigation accuracy can satisfy the requirement of soft landing on asteroids. Originality/value - Based on feature detection and tracking, an autonomous optical navigation scheme is brought out and the validity is confirmed by computer simulation.