Sequential convex programming approach for real-time guidance during the powered descent phase of mars landing missions

An on-board guidance generation approach for Mars pinpoint landing has been developed based on sequential convex programming. To optimize the flight time in the formulation, a discretized form of the landing problem was constructed under the conditions of linearized states, controls, and time increment between consecutive time steps. To implement this strategy in real time, on-board demonstrations were conducted with the GR740, which is the next-generation on-board processor of choice for the European Space Agency. The total number of time steps was determined based on the results of these demonstrations. The numerically simulated results also indicate that the solution obtained via the proposed strategy is close to the optimized GPOPS-II solution under the condition of no disturbance. Even under disturbances such as navigation errors, initial prediction errors, and perturbation forces, the proposed strategy ensures that the spacecraft reaches its target position with near-optimal fuel consumption. (C) 2021 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.