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

Publications

Evolved Acceleration Guidance for Planetary Entry    18th International Symposium on Space Flight Dynamics, Munich, Germany, October 2004.    Authors: K.D. Mease, J.A. Leavitt, and M. Ferch

Expected EDL Navigation Performance with Spacecraft to Spacecraft Radiometric Data    AIAA-2005-5949, AIAA GN&C Conference, Aug 15-18, 2005, San Francisco, CA.    Authors: P.D. Burkhart, T. Ely, and C. Duncan, E.G. Lightsey, T. Campbell and A. Morgensen

Expected Performance of the Electra Transceiver for Mars Missions    AIAA-2005-5948, AIAA GN&C Conference, Aug 15-18, 2005, San Francisco, CA.    Authors: P.D. Burkhart, T. Ely, and C. Duncan

Miniature Coherent Velocimeter and Altimeter (MCVA) for Terminal Descent Control on Lunar and Planetary Landers    Proceedings, 13th Coherent Laser Radar Conference, Kamakura, Japan, October 16-21, 2005, pp. 226-229    Authors: 7.D. Chang, G. Cardell, P. Szwaykowski, S. T. Shaffat, and P. Meras

Multi-Sensor Terrain Classification for Safe Spacecraft Landing    IEEE Trans. on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, vol. 40, no. 4, October 2004, pp. 1122-1131.    Authors: A. Howard and H. Seraji

Next Generation Millimeter-wave Radar for Safe Planetary Landing    IEEEAC-1188, 2005 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, March, 2005.    Authors: B.D. Pollard & G. Sadowy

Sherpa Moving Mass Entry Descent Landing System    Proceedings of IDEC/CIE 2005, Long Beach, California, September 27, 2005.