Minimum-Fuel Powered Descent Guidance for Mars Landing

Motivated by the requirement for pinpoint landing in the future Mars missions, this paper presents a convex programming algorithm for the numerical solution of the minimum fuel powered descent guidance problem. For the engine's variable thrust, based on factors like amplitude of the thruster, the Martian surface constraint, descent inclination, this paper describes the problem of fuel-optimal precise soft landing at the power descent phase and gives the corresponding equivalent optimization problem; then the equivalent optimization problem is discretized and converted to the optimization problem with consideration of linear constraints and second order cone constraints. Finally, through the simulation analysis of typical-fuel optimal landing trajectory, it can be concluded: the resulting guidance algorithm can potentially be implemented onboard a spacecraft for real-time application.