Time-of-Flight Free Model Predictive Control Application for Polyhedral Asteroid Landings

In this work, an application of model predictive control (MPC) for polyhedral-gravity asteroid landings is presented. The MPC utilizes a pre-computed, fixed time-of-flight (ToF) reference trajectory generated through successive convex approximations (SCvx) to minimize a ToF free cost function. The implementation of the MPC is designed to be computationally cheap enough for application on board the asteroid landing craft. The approach is demonstrated by running simulations of landings on various asteroids, comparing the fuel expenditure between the reference and MPC trajectories, as well as the computation time versus the simulation time.