Review and Prospect of the Powered Descent Guidance and Control Technologies for Lunar Soft Landing

Abstract

Future lunar landing missions substantially focus on lunar resources and moon base, which lead to high-precision requirements for landing on the moon. And to achieve safe pin-point landing at a pre-selected landing site, the powered descent guidance and control technologies are of great importance for these missions. First, in this paper, two successful lunar soft landing scenarios and corresponding guidance modes are summarized systematically. Second, the existing lunar soft-landing guidance schemes and state-of-art are specifically described and comparatively analyzed. Finally, taking future sample return and moon base missions for potential project goals, a comprehensive analysis and prospect for next generation powered descent guidance and control technologies and the related core scientific and technological problems for lunar soft landing are conducted.

Keywords

lunar soft landing / powered descent / guidance and control / review and prospect