Guidance, Navigation, and Control Technology Assessment for Future Planetary Science Missions | Part II. Onboard Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GN&C)

Publication No.: JPL D-110048

Future planetary explorations envisioned by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Origins, Worlds and Life (OWL) 2023–2032,1 developed at the request of NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Planetary Science Division (PSD), seek to reach targets of broad scientific interest across the solar system. This goal can be achieved by missions with next-generation capabilities such as innovative interplanetary trajectory solutions, highly accurate landings, the ability to be in close proximity to targets of interest, advanced pointing precision, multiple spacecraft in collaboration, multi-target tours, and advanced robotic surface exploration. Advancements in guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) and mission design—ranging from software and algorithm development to new sensors—will be necessary to enable these future missions.

Spacecraft GN&C technologies have been evolving since the launch of the first rocket. Guidance is the process of generating guidance commands which specify the desired flight path of the vehicle from its current location to a designated target. Navigation is the science behind transporting a vehicle from place to place; particularly, the method of determining position, course, and distance traveled. Control is defined as the onboard manipulation of vehicle steering controls to track guidance commands while maintaining vehicle pointing with the required precision. As missions become more complex, technological advancements of GN&C systems must keep pace, and the last decade has shown a lot of progress.

This document—Part II, Onboard Guidance, Navigation, and Control—is the second in a series of four technology assessment reports evaluating the capabilities and technologies needed for future missions pursuing SMD PSD’s scientific goals. It covers attitude estimation and control in general, as well as the estimation and control of vehicle flight paths when flight path and attitude dynamics are strongly coupled (as is the case during certain critical phases, such as “, and landing, in some planetary missions). These reports cover the status of technologies and provide findings and recommendations to NASA PSD for future needs in GN&C and mission design technologies. Part I, Onboard and Ground Navigation and Mission Design, covers planetary mission design in general, as well as the estimation and control of vehicle flight paths when flight path and attitude dynamics may be treated as decoupled or only loosely coupled (as is the case the majority of the time in a typical planetary mission).2 Part III, Surface and Sub-Surface Guidance, Navigation, and Control, examines GN&C for vehicles that are not in free flight, but that operate on and below the surface of a natural body of the solar system.3 For the first time, Part IV, Aerial Guidance, Navigation, and Control, examines GN&C for heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air vehicles in buoyant or sustained free flight in the atmospheric environment of a natural body of the solar system.4 Together, these documents provide the PSD with a roadmap for achieving science missions in the next decade.

Patricia M. Beauchamp

Engineering and Science Directorate Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology

February 28, 2023