FILTER DESIGN FOR SMALL INTEGRATED NAVIGATOR FOR PLANETARY EXPLORATION

Abstract

The mass of a vehicle is limited by today’s space propulsion technology. By reducing the mass of the components or of the complete subsystem it would be possible to shorten travel time or to increase the payload. One of the subsystems is the navigation system. Today’s navigation systems for exploration missions have a total mass of over 10 kg. The aim is to reduce this total mass to less than 3 kg without loss of accuracy of the navigation system. To reach this goal the navigation system uses a combination of different sensors. One possible combination of sensors is introduced here. For this combination, a simulation was used to check how accurate this navigation solution is and how much influence the different sensors have on the navigation solution.