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Autonomous atmospheric entry on mars: Performance improvement using a novel adaptive control algorithm

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Abstract

Upcoming landing missions to Mars will require on-board guidance and control systems in order to meet the scientific requirement of landing safely within hundreds of meters to the target of interest. More specifically, in the longitudinal plane, the first objective of the entry guidance and control system is to bring the vehicle to its specified velocity at the specified altitude (as required for safe parachute deployment), while the second objective is to reach the target position in the longitudinal plane. This paper proposes an improvement to the robustness of the constant flight path angle guidance law for achieving the first objective. The improvement consists of combining this guidance law with a novel adaptive control scheme, derived from the so-called Simple Adaptive Control (SAC) technique. Monte-Carlo simulation results are shown to demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed guidance and adaptive control system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Qc., J1K 2R1, Canada

    Steve Ulrich (Graduate Student, Member AAS) & Jean de Lafontaine (President, NGC Aerospace Ltd.; Professor, Member AAS)

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  1. Steve Ulrich
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  2. Jean de Lafontaine
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Correspondence to Steve Ulrich.

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Ulrich, S., de Lafontaine, J. Autonomous atmospheric entry on mars: Performance improvement using a novel adaptive control algorithm. J of Astronaut Sci 55, 431–449 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03256534

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