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Flight Testing a Real-Time Hazard Detection System for Safe Lunar Landing on the Rocket-Powered Morpheus VehicleThe Hazard Detection System (HDS) is a component of the ALHAT (Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology) sensor suite, which together provide a lander Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) system with the relevant measurements necessary to enable safe precision landing under any lighting conditions. The HDS consists of a stand-alone compute element (CE), an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and a gimbaled flash LIDAR sensor that are used, in real-time, to generate a Digital Elevation Map (DEM) of the landing terrain, detect candidate safe landing sites for the vehicle through Hazard Detection (HD), and generate hazard-relative navigation (HRN) measurements used for safe precision landing. Following an extensive ground and helicopter test campaign, ALHAT was integrated onto the Morpheus rocket-powered terrestrial test vehicle in March 2014. Morpheus and ALHAT then performed five successful free flights at the simulated lunar hazard field constructed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at Kennedy Space Center, for the first time testing the full system on a lunar-like approach geometry in a relevant dynamic environment. During these flights, the HDS successfully generated DEMs, correctly identified safe landing sites and provided HRN measurements to the vehicle, marking the first autonomous landing of a NASA rocket-powered vehicle in hazardous terrain. This paper provides a brief overview of the HDS architecture and describes its in-flight performance.



Document ID
20160009637
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Trawny, Nikolas
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Huertas, Andres
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Luna, Michael E.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Villalpando, Carlos Y.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Martin, Keith E.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Carson, John M.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Johnson, Andrew E.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Restrepo, Carolina
(NASA Johnson Space Center Houston, TX, United States)
Roback, Vincent E.
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 1, 2016
Publication Date
January 5, 2015
Subject Category
Spacecraft Design, Testing And Performance
Meeting Information
Meeting: AIAA Scitech 2015
Location: Kissimee, FL
Country: United States
Start Date: January 5, 2015
End Date: January 9, 2015
Sponsors: American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
Avoidance
Precise Landing

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