[meteorite-list] COBALT Flight Demonstrations Fuse Technologies to Gain Precision Landing Results

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2017 13:36:49 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201703202036.v2KKanom009235_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6780

COBALT Flight Demonstrations Fuse Technologies to Gain Precision Landing Results
March 17, 2017

Many regions in the solar system beckon for exploration, but they are
considered unreachable due to technology gaps in current landing systems.
The CoOperative Blending of Autonomous Landing Technologies (COBALT) project,
conducted by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) and Human
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, could change that.

Through a flight campaign this month through April, COBALT will mature
and demonstrate new guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) technologies
to enable precision landing for future exploration missions.

"COBALT will allow us to reduce the risk in developing future landing
systems and will benefit robotic landers to planetary surfaces by allowing
for autonomous precision landing," said LaNetra Tate, STMD's Game Changing
Development (GCD) program executive. "This will definitely become a game-changing
technology."

The campaign will pair and test new landing sensor technologies that promise
to yield the highest-precision navigation solution ever tested for NASA
space landing applications.

The technologies, a Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL), which provides ultra-precise
velocity and line-of-sight range measurements, and the Lander Vision System
(LVS), which provides terrain relative navigation, will be integrated
and flight tested aboard a rocket-powered vertical takeoff, vertical landing
(VTVL) platform. The platform, named Xodiac, was developed by Masten Space
Systems in Mojave, California.

"In this first flight campaign, we plan to successfully complete the integration,
flight testing and performance analysis of the COBALT payload," explained
John M. Carson III, COBALT project manager. "This is considered a passive
test, where COBALT will be solely collecting data, while the Xodiac vehicle
will rely on its GPS for active navigation.""

In a follow-up flight campaign in summer 2017, COBALT will become the
active navigation system for Xodiac, and the vehicle will use GPS only
as a safety monitor and backup.

"The knowledge from these flights will lead into the development of systems
for deployment in future NASA landing missions to Mars and the moon,"
said Carson.

So how does it work?

The technologies themselves are very different, but together they are
a recipe for precision landing.

The NDL, developed at NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC), is an evolution
of a prototype flown by the former ALHAT (Autonomous precision Landing
and Hazard Avoidance Technology) project on the NASA Morpheus vehicle
in 2014. The new NDL is 60 percent smaller, operates at nearly triple
the speed and provides longer range measurements.

"NDL functionally is similar to the radar systems used in previous Mars
landers, Phoenix and Mars Science Laboratory," explained Farzin Amzajerdian,
NDL chief scientist at Langley. "The major difference is that the NDL
uses a laser instead of a microwave as its transmitter. Operating at almost
four orders of magnitude higher frequency makes the measurement a whole
lot more accurate. NDL also is much smaller than radar systems, which
is a big deal as every ounce counts when sending a lander to Mars or other
destinations."

LVS, developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is a camera-based
navigation system that photographs the terrain beneath a descending spacecraft
and matches it with onboard maps to determine vehicle location, explained
Carl Seubert, the COBALT project lead at JPL.

"This allows the craft to detect its location relative to large landing
hazards seen in the onboard maps, such as large boulders and terrain outcroppings,"
Seubert said.

COBALT is one springboard for these technologies, which will find their
way into future missions. The NDL design is geared toward infusion onto
near-term lunar, Mars or other missions. The LVS was developed for infusion
onto the Mars 2020 robotic lander mission, and has application to many
other missions.

"Both NDL and LVS come from more than a decade of NASA research and development
investments across multiple projects within robotic and human exploration
programs, and from the hard work and dedication of personnel across the
agency," said Carson.

"These COBALT technologies give moon and Mars spacecraft the ability to
land much more precisely, improving access to interesting sites in complex
terrain and to any exploration assets previously deployed to the surface,"
said Jason Crusan, director of NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems division.
"Landings will also be more controlled and gentle, potentially allowing
smaller landing legs and propellant reserves, and resulting in lower mission
risk, mass and cost."

The COBALT team is managed at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston,
and comprises of engineers from JSC, JPL in Pasadena, California, and
LaRC in Hampton, Virginia. All three centers will jointly conduct the
flight campaign and post-flight data analysis.

"The progress and success of the COBALT project has relied on the team
dynamic between NASA centers that started during the prior ALHAT project,"
said Carson. "The team has a common goal to develop and deploy precision
landing GN&C technologies, and they maintain constant communication and
a focus on collaboration to iron out the technical challenges and operational
constraints required to develop, interface and successfully test the sensors
and payload."

COBALT involves multiple NASA programs, including the Human Exploration
and Operations Mission Directorate's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES),
and the Game Changing Development and Flight Opportunities programs, both
under STMD. In collaboration with the AES program, NASA is paving the
way to reach farther into space.

Based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California,
the Flight Opportunities program funds technology development flight tests
on commercial suborbital space providers of which Masten is a vendor.
The program has previously tested the LVS on the Masten rocket and validated
the technology for the Mars 2020 rover.

The COBALT flights will demonstrate blended LVS and NDL measurement viability
for the precise, controlled soft landing of future missions. While the
sensors are key enablers for future human and robotic landing missions
to Mars, the moon and other solar system destinations, the COBALT payload
also will provide a reusable platform for integration and testing of other
precision landing and hazard avoidance capabilities developed within NASA
or industry.

For more information about the COBALT project, visit:

https://gameon.nasa.gov/cooperative-blending-of-autonomous-landing-technology-cobalt/

For more information about the Flight Opportunities program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/flightopportunities/index.html

News Media Contact
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good at jpl.nasa.gov

Leslie Williams
Flight Opportunities program
Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
leslie.a.williams at nasa.gov
661-276-3893

Joe Atkinson
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
Joseph.s.atkinson at nasa.gov
757-864-5644

Written by Denise Stefula
Langley Research Center

2017-073
Received on Mon 20 Mar 2017 04:36:49 PM PDT