Visual navigation for lunar missions using sequential triangulation technique

Abstract

A vision-aided autonomous navigation system for translunar missions based on celestial triangulation (Earth and Moon) is proposed. Line-of-Sight (LoS) vectors from the spacecraft to celestial bodies, retrieved using ephemeris data from the designed translunar trajectory, are used to simulate camera observations at unknown locations. The resection problem of triangulation is employed to calculate the relative position of the spacecraft with respect to the observed bodies along the trajectory. The noisy LoS data are processed using the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Simulation results demonstrate that, starting from a random initial location, the proposed navigation system can be used for navigating translunar trajectories with the fast and accurate algorithm employed.