A novel trajectory generation scheme for lunar landing exploration mission

Landing trajectory generation scheme is one of the most important technologies for future lunar or planetary exploration mission. To achieve a precise trajectory of landing, an advanced guidance scheme is necessary. This research outlines a comparison of different methods of solution of trajectory generation scheme of lunar descent and proposes an novel solution that allows a full depiction of a descent vehicle motion from orbital states down to the final landing event. In the conventional method of solution there exist some poor assumptions such as, during descent a constant vertical gravitational acceleration is the only other force acting on the descent vehicle. This inadequate postulation limits the validity of the solutions to system with in very low altitude terminal descent area i.e., close to the lunar surface. In this research Note, an advanced descent solution is proposed where centrifugal acceleration term is retained along with the gravitational acceleration term. It allows a complete representation of the descent module motion from orbital speed conditions down to the final landing state. Mathematical derivations of new scheme are verified in terms of conventional scheme and the comparative simulation results for full integrated solution, conventional schemes and a proposed advanced scheme are demonstrated to test the performance.