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Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2016 Symposium (2017) / Chapter Skim
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Autonomous Precision Landing of Space Rockets - Lars Blackmore
Pages 33-42

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From page 33...
... This paper reviews the challenges of precision landing, recent advances that have enabled precision landing on Earth for commercial reusable rockets, and what is required to extend this to landing on planets such as Mars. BRIEF HISTORY OF AUTONOMOUS SPACE LANDINGS In the past 50 years autonomous spacecraft have brought humans back from space, landed several rovers on the surface of Mars (Bonfiglio et al.
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From page 34...
... Image credit: Ryan Anderson, USGS Astrogeology Science Center. Mars missions has steadily improved, but is still measured in kilometers rather than meters.
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From page 35...
... weighs about 35 metric tons and has a peak deceleration of six times Earth gravity on reentry. • Winds push around the reentry vehicle, with high-altitude winds at Earth regularly exceeding 100 miles per hour.
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From page 36...
... Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket has landed several times at the company's West Texas test site. SpaceX's Falcon 9 first stage has landed both on land at Cape Canaveral and on a floating landing platform known as the autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS)
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From page 37...
... The landing burn is the last opportunity to reduce the dispersions, and requires the ability to divert, or move sideways. For F9R, controlling dispersions requires precision boostback burn targeting, endo-atmospheric control with fins (shown in Figure 5)
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From page 38...
... Failure to find the optimal solution may use up the available propellant, with the same result. Finally, a hardware failure may require replanning the trajectory multiple times.
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From page 39...
... to generate customized flight code, which enables very high-speed onboard convex optimization. NEXT STEPS Although high-precision landings from space have happened on Earth, challenges stand in the way of transferring this technology to landing on other bodies in the solar system.
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From page 40...
... 2007. Convex programming approach to powered descent guidance for Mars landing.
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From page 41...
... 2010. Minimum landing error powered descent guidance for Mars landing using convex optimization.
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Key Terms

  • mars landing
  • drone ship
  • landing ellipse
  • convex optimization
  • cape canaveral

  • ieee aerospace
  • terrain relative
  • powered descent
  • relative navigation
  • reentry vehicle

  • aerospace conference
  • landing requires
  • landing zone
  • achieving precision
  • landing site

  • space science
  • autonomous spacecraft
  • ballistic missile
  • science reviews
  • spaceport drone

  • boostback burn
  • recent advances
  • zero velocity
  • descent guidance
  • big sky

  • laboratory entry
  • precision boostback
  • minimum landing
  • landing burn
  • landing vertically


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
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