Advanced Entry, Descent, and Landing Technologies (EDL) - Beyond MSL, Mars missions may need the capability to land much closer to a desired target and/or advanced methods of detecting, avoiding, or tolerating landing hazards. The solicitation supported the development of technologies needed for technology development includes "pinpoint landing" (within tens of meters to 1 km of a target site), and advanced hazard detection/avoidance in the area of Advanced Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) as follows:
- Pinpoint Landing
- Methodologies suitable for use in both advanced hypersonic entry guidance and aerocapture guidance;
- Methodologies for autonomously compensating for wind drift on a parachute or other drag device during low altitude, low speed flight;
- Methodologies (including sensors) suitable for autonomous onboard identification of a preselected landing site from a stored onboard terrain map, and guidance and navigation to the site; and
- Methodologies for navigation with radiometric data involving the use of orbiting "beacon" spacecraft, and for filtering of radiometric and/or sensor-based tracking data for autonomous navigation during entry, descent, and landing.
- Hazard Detection/Avoidance
- Development of advanced active terrain mapping sensor providing increased range (>5 km), higher ranging accuracy (better than 5 m at 2 km and 0.04 meter at 80 m) higher field of regard (> 10x10 deg), high frame rate (>1 Hz), and
- Algorithms to interpret sensor data or fuse data from multiple sensors, to detect and/or avoid hazards, and/or to select sites that are safe and traversable by rovers.
Point of Contact: Chester Chu
