Analytical solutions for hover-to-hover lunar landing: Attitude-driven guidance approach

Abstract

In precise lunar landing missions, several hovering points are often set to detect obstacles or switch between ranging sensors during the vertical descent phase, the terminal landing sequence. This paper proposes analytical solutions for the guidance between hovering points, which are tracked along the desired attitude sequence. Then, a methodology is proposed to optimize the vertical descent trajectory and hovering point selection simultaneously while considering fuel consumption and constraints, such as horizontal/vertical distance and control error. This study demonstrated the proposed method’s effectiveness through Monte-Carlo simulations, which are also described in this paper.