Constrained optimal multi-phase lunar landing trajectory with minimum fuel consumption

A Legendre pseudo spectral philosophy based multi-phase constrained fuel-optimal trajectory design approach is presented in this paper. The objective here is to find an optimal approach to successfully guide a lunar lander from perilune (18 km altitude) of a transfer orbit to a height of 100 m over a specific landing site. After attaining 100 m altitude, there is a mission critical re-targeting phase, which has very different objective (but is not critical for fuel optimization) and hence is not considered in this paper. The proposed approach takes into account various mission constraints in different phases from perilune to the landing site. These constraints include phase-1 ('braking with rough navigation') from 18 km altitude to 7 km altitude where navigation accuracy is poor, phase-2 ('attitude hold') to hold the lander attitude for 35 sec for vision camera processing for obtaining navigation error, and phase-3 ('braking with precise navigation') from end of phase-2 to 100 m altitude over the landing site, where navigation accuracy is good (due to vision camera navigation inputs). At the end of phase-1, there are constraints on position and attitude. In Phase-2, the attitude must be held throughout. At the end of phase-3, the constraints include accuracy in position, velocity as well as attitude orientation. The proposed optimal trajectory technique satisfies the mission constraints in each phase and provides an overall fuel-minimizing guidance command history. (C) 2017 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved