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A Risk-Constrained Multi-Stage Decision Making Approach to the Architectural Analysis of Mars MissionsThis paper presents a novel risk-constrained multi-stage decision making approach to the architectural analysis of planetary rover missions. In particular, focusing on a 2018 Mars rover concept, which was considered as part of a potential Mars Sample Return campaign, we model the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) phase and the rover traverse phase as four sequential decision-making stages. The problem is to find a sequence of divert and driving maneuvers so that the rover drive is minimized and the probability of a mission failure (e.g., due to a failed landing) is below a user specified bound. By solving this problem for several different values of the model parameters (e.g., divert authority), this approach enables rigorous, accurate and systematic trade-offs for the EDL system vs. the mobility system, and, more in general, cross-domain trade-offs for the different phases of a space mission. The overall optimization problem can be seen as a chance-constrained dynamic programming problem, with the additional complexity that 1) in some stages the disturbances do not have any probabilistic characterization, and 2) the state space is extremely large (i.e, hundreds of millions of states for trade-offs with high-resolution Martian maps). To this purpose, we solve the problem by performing an unconventional combination of average and minimax cost analysis and by leveraging high efficient computation tools from the image processing community. Preliminary trade-off results are presented.
Document ID
20150005517
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Kuwata, Yoshiaki
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Pavone, Marco
(Stanford Univ. Stanford, CA, United States)
Balaram, J. (Bob)
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
April 10, 2015
Publication Date
December 10, 2012
Subject Category
Administration And Management
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Meeting Information
Meeting: 2012 IEEE Annual Conference on Decision and Control (CDC)
Location: Maui, HI
Country: United States
Start Date: December 10, 2012
End Date: December 13, 2012
Sponsors: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
entry, descent, and landing (EDL)
Mars Sample Return (MSR),
project planning.
mission planning
planetary exploration missions

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