Autonomous smart robotic spacecraft/lander for landing on celestial bodies

Due to long communication delay between target celestial bodies and base stations on the earth and relative shorter landing duration, traditional GNC (navigation guidance and control) mode based on Deep Space Network (DSN) is no more suitable for planetary landing, so robotic spacecraft must have the ability autonomous GNC and autonomous obstacle detection and avoidance. This paper describes the elementary GNC design and development of next generation smart robotic spacecraft for landing on celestial bodies. An autonomous GNC scheme based on target celestial bodies image information is developed, autonomous obstacle detection and avoidance algorithm are depicted as well. The proposed scheme is validated by computer simulation.