Waypoint Constrained Multi-Phase Optimal Guidance of Spacecraft for Soft Lunar Landing

Abstract

A waypoint constrained multi-phase nonlinear optimal guidance scheme is presented in this paper for the soft landing of a spacecraft on the Lunar surface by using the recently developed computationally efficient Generalized Model Predictive Static Programming (G-MPSP). The proposed guidance ensures that the spacecraft passes through two waypoints, which is a strong requirement to facilitate proper landing site detection by the on-board camera for mission safety. Constraints that are required at the waypoints as well as at the terminal point include position, velocity, and attitude of the spacecraft. In addition to successfully meeting these hard constraints, the G-MPSP guidance also minimizes the fuel consumption, which is a very good advantage. An optimal final time selection procedure is also presented in this paper to facilitate minimization of fuel requirement to the best extent possible. Extensive simulation studies have been carried out with various perturbations to illustrate the effectiveness of the algorithm. Finally, processor-in-loop simulation has been carried out, which demonstrates the feasibility of on-board implementation of the proposed guidance.