Real-Time Retargeting Using Controllability Boundary for Chandrayaan-3 Lunar Landing
Abstract
This paper presents the real-time retargeting guidance policy developed for the Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission. The baseline guidance generates approximate fuel-optimal descent trajectories, while a high-level policy enables safe retargeting to alternate sites when the nominal site becomes infeasible. The retargeting strategy leverages a convex representation of the controllability boundary, allowing rapid feasibility checks and real-time target updates. To the best of the authors knowledge, this represents the first application of a data-driven retargeting framework in an operational lunar landing mission. Pre-flight simulations and Chandrayaan-3 flight results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Comments: 8 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in American Control Conference 2026
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.29412,
title = {Real-Time Retargeting Using Controllability Boundary for Chandrayaan-3 Lunar Landing},
author = {Suraj Kumar and Debjyoti Chakrabarti and Aditya Rallapalli and Bharat Kumar GVP and Ashok Kumar Kakula},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29412},
year = {2026}
}