Bio-inspired landing approaches and their potential use on extraterrestrial bodies

Abstract

Landing on asteroids and extraterrestrial bodies is a critical stage for future exploration missions. Safe and soft landing on asteroids will be required even though the task is way harder than on the Earth due to the small size, irregular shape and variable surface properties of asteroids, as well as the low gravity and negligible drag experienced by the spacecraft. Optical guidance and navigation for autonomous landing on small celestial bodies have been studied in the past years with a focus on the closed-loop guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) systems (De Lafontaine1992, Kawaguchi et al. 1999).