When Astrobotic's Griffin lander descends to the lunar surface, it will precisely target a small landing ellipse (a small area where it might land) and autonomously maneuver to avoid hazards such as rocks bigger than 25cm and slopes greater than 15.
Last month Astrobotic introduced the landing sensor package and the concept of map registration - a technique that matches ("registers") a location in an in-flight image to the same location on a map.
Now, an Astrobotic team led by
Kevin Peterson is headed out to
Masten Space Systems, located at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, CA, to fly the landing sensor package and software system on the Masten Xombie suborbital rocket.
This is the first of three flights on Masten's reusable launch vehicles - all made possible by a NASA Flight Opportunities award.
The first flight will operate the system in an open-loop mode, where Astrobotic's sensor package captures the same data it would use for an autonomous landing, but without actually controlling the vehicle.
The second and third flights, slated for later this spring, will be closed-loop flights where Astrobotic's landing software uses the sensor-package data in real time to guide the vehicle's landing.
Terrestrial simulation of the landing task requires creativity. Over the last year, Astrobotic has used a variety of test environments to exercise the landing system components and gather data about their operation.
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