The Autonomous Positioning Method for the Mars Probes Based on Cognizing Optical Information

Abstract

Since Mars probe is very far from the earth during the flight, and the radio delay is up to tens of minutes, it is difficult to provide effective real-time information for the conventional ground-based radio navigation such as DSN of NASA. For probe in communication failure with the earth, it is very important to measure its position and speed based on its surrounding environment information, thus, probe autonomous navigation technology based on the target optical becomes a research focus. This paper first analyzes environment optical information easily perceived by the probe, then designs an autonomous position method based on optical information, at last, conducts a mathematical simulation to the positioning and speed measuring in the assumed Mars exploration Missions 2016. Simulation results show that the accuracy of the proposed method is very close to that of ground radio navigation, and the proposed method is feasible for engineering application.