Related papers: LunarNav: Crater-based Localization for Long-range…
The exploration of planetary surfaces is predominately unmanned, calling for a landing vehicle and an autonomous and/or teleoperated rover. Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques can be leveraged for better mission…
Highly accurate real-time localization is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of planetary rovers exploring the surface of Mars. Mars rover operations rely on vision-based systems to avoid hazards as well as plan safe…
The rapid growth of cislunar activities, including lunar landings, the Lunar Gateway, and in-space refueling stations, requires advances in cost-efficient trajectory design and reliable integration of navigation and remote sensing.…
Endurance is a mission concept to explore and ultimately return samples from the Moon's largest and oldest impact basin, South Pole-Aitken (SPA). SPA holds the answers to many outstanding planetary science questions, including the earliest…
This paper proposes a Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) architecture for planetary rovers targeting the conditions of upcoming Mars exploration missions such as Mars 2020 and the Sample Fetching Rover (SFR). The navigation…
Rover localization is one of the perquisites for large scale rover exploration. In NASA's Mars 2020 mission, the Ingenuity helicopter is carried together with the rover, which is capable of obtaining high-resolution imagery of Mars terrain,…
We present a modular, full-stack autonomy system for lunar surface navigation and mapping developed for the Lunar Autonomy Challenge. Operating in a GNSS-denied, visually challenging environment, our pipeline integrates semantic…
Crater ellipticity determination is a complex and time consuming task that so far has evaded successful automation. We train a state of the art computer vision algorithm to identify craters in Lunar digital elevation maps and retrieve their…
Robotic and human lunar landings are a focus of future NASA missions. Precision landing capabilities are vital to guarantee the success of the mission, and the safety of the lander and crew. During the approach to the surface there are…
Geophysical imaging of the lunar near-surface structure will be key for in situ resource utilization, identification of hazards for crews and infrastructure, and answering science questions on the formation and interior of the Moon. The…
The visual detection and tracking of surface terrain is required for spacecraft to safely land on or navigate within close proximity to celestial objects. Current approaches rely on template matching with pre-gathered patch-based features,…
Exploration of Mars has been made possible using a series of landers, rovers and orbiters. The HiRise camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has captured high-resolution images covering large tracts of the surface. However, orbital…
The Lunar CRater Observations and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission impacted a spent Centaur rocket stage into a permanently shadowed region near the lunar south pole. The Sheperding Spacecraft (SSC) separated \sim9 hours before impact and…
Craters are one of the most studied planetary features used for different scientific analyses, such as estimation of surface age and surface processes. Satellite images utilized for crater detection often have low resolution (LR) due to…
NASA's return to the Moon presents unparalleled opportunities to advance high-impact scientific capabilities. At the cutting edge of these possibilities are extremely high-resolution interferometric observations at visible and ultraviolet…
Future lunar missions will require autonomous rovers capable of traversing tens of kilometers across challenging terrain while maintaining accurate localization and producing globally consistent maps. However, the absence of global…
The Lunar Geophysical Network (LGN) mission is proposed to land on the Moon in 2030 and deploy packages at four locations to enable geophysical measurements for 6-10 years. Returning to the lunar surface with a long-lived geophysical…
NASA and ESA are preparing a series of human exploration missions using the four-person Orion crew vehicle, launched by NASA's Space Launch System, and a Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) that enable long duration (>30 days)…
The success of a multi-kilometre drive by a solar-powered rover at the lunar south pole depends upon careful planning in space and time due to highly dynamic solar illumination conditions. An additional challenge is that the rover may be…
Autonomous spacecraft relative navigation technology has been planned for and applied to many famous space missions. The development of on-board electronics systems has enabled the use of vision-based and LiDAR-based methods to achieve…