AI-enabled crater-based navigation for lunar mapping

Crater-based navigation (CBN) uses the ubiquitous impact craters of the Moon observed on images as natural landmarks to determine the six degrees of freedom (6Dof) pose of a spacecraft. To date, CBN has primarily been studied in the context of powered descent and landing. These missions are typically short in duration, with high-frequency imagery captured from a nadir viewpoint over well-lit terrain. In contrast, lunar mapping missions involve sparse, oblique imagery acquired under varying illumination conditions over potentially year-long campaigns, posing significantly greater challenges for pose estimation. We bridge this gap with STELLA—the first end-to-end CBN pipeline for long-duration lunar mapping. STELLA combines a mask R-CNN-based crater detector, a descriptor-less crater identification module, a robust perspective-n-crater pose solver, and a batch orbit determination back-end. To rigorously test STELLA, we introduce CRESENT-365—the first public dataset that emulates a year-long lunar mapping mission. Each of its 15,283 images is rendered from high-resolution digital elevation models with SPICE-derived Sun angles and Moon motion, delivering realistic global coverage, illumination cycles, and viewing geometries. Experiments on CRESENT+ and CRESENT-365 show that STELLA maintains metre-level position accuracy and sub-degree attitude accuracy on average across wide ranges of viewing angles, illumination conditions, and lunar latitudes. These results constitute the first comprehensive assessment of CBN in a true lunar mapping setting and inform operational conditions that should be considered for future missions.

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