Planetary landing technology that uses visual navigation is to be tested by its developer, the European Space Agency, using an unmanned helicopter.
The technology was to have been used for the now-abandoned Mercury lander that would have been part of ESA’s BepiColombo mission. The joint mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, to be launched in April 2012, will now only have an orbiter.
The landing system is designed to take images from a normal video camera and compare them against a pre-generated three-dimensional map of the planet’s surface.
The navigation system would begin to operate at about 26,200ft (8,000m) altitude and 20km (11nm) from the target landing zone.
Incoming images are compared to the stored surface maps using a processor called an optical correlator. “The optical correlator enables real-time processing. We worked on that with earlier ESA contracts,” says Valery Tchernykh, a researcher and visual navigation developer with Dresden Technical University’s Institute for Automation.
The landing system determines location, altitude and velocity from the incoming images. So far the surface models and navigation system have only been simulated. The next step would be the helicopter flight test, but no date for has been set.
Source: Flight International
