the first flight tests of the precision landing gnc test facility
- Paper number
IAC-09.A3.3B.7
- Author
Dr. Gian Paolo Guizzo, Carlo Gavazzi Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Mrs. Maria Manzano Jurado, GMV Aerospace and Defense S.A., Spain
- Coauthor
Mr. Andrea Bertoli, Carlo Gavazzi Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Mr. Filippo Mailland, Carlo Gavazzi Space, Italy
- Coauthor
Dr. Christian Philippe, European Space Agency, The Netherlands
- Year
2009
- Abstract
The Precision Landing GNC Test Facility (PLGTF) has been conceived and developed with the purpose to test, in a realistic environment, GNC techniques and technologies to be implemented on future Mars and Moon landers. PLGTF has been developed in the frame of ESA Aurora exploration program and it was conceived for reproducing the dynamic of the powered descent phase of a planetary lander which objective will be to perform precise landing on sites with a high scientific interest. The test phase of the whole developed test facility, which is formed by a ground and a flight segment, culminated with the execution of the first end-to-end flight tests. The flight tests performed permitted to assess the actual performance of the test facility and to declare the fully operability prior to its utilization on Mars and Moon analogues on Earth. Moreover the flight tests performed provided relevant information for orienting further enhancements and improvements of the test facility, to be implemented in the near future. One of these enhancements is the development of a line of sight stabilized platform, which firstly will stabilize the GNC sensors under test compensating the unwanted angular velocities and angular accelerations generated by the unmanned air vehicle during the descent and secondarily will permit to reproduce the lander attitude leaving the unmanned air vehicle committed in reproducing the desired trajectory. The flight tests performed and reported in this paper are with PLGTF configured for its first implementation, which has been oriented to test the navigation function of a camera-based navigation system. Nevertheless PLGTF has been designed in a flexible way in order to permit the accommodation and the interface with other GNC systems both camera and LIDAR based. Finally test results and analysis of the flight test cases performed will be shown for a set of test cases, which includes the Mars and Moon landing scenarios but not limited to; this in order to validate the test facility in a wide and extensive way.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)