Minimum-Fuel Trajectories and Near-Optimal Explicit Guidance for Pinpoint Landing from Low Lunar Orbit

• Published in: Aerospace
• Main Authors: Matteo Caruso, Giulio De Angelis, Edoardo Maria Leonardi, Mauro Pontani
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute 2025
• Subjects: minimum-fuel lunar descent; pinpoint landing; near-optimal explicit guidance; low lunar orbit; Lambert-based trajectory optimization; powered descent guidance; South Pole landing; South pole
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace12030183

This research addresses minimum-fuel pinpoint lunar landing at the South Pole, focusing on trajectory design and near-optimal guidance aimed at driving a spacecraft from a circular low lunar orbit (LLO) to an instantaneous hovering state above the lunar surface. Orbit dynamics is propagated in a high-fidelity ephemeris-based framework, which employs spherical coordinates as the state variables and includes several harmonics of the selenopotential, as well as third-body gravitational perturbations due to the Earth and Sun. Minimum-fuel two-impulse descent transfers are identified using Lambert problem solutions as initial guesses, followed by refinement in the high-fidelity model, for a range of initial LLO inclinations. Then, a feedback Lambert-based impulsive guidance algorithm is designed and tested through a Monte Carlo campaign to assess the effectiveness under non-nominal conditions related to injection and actuation errors. Because the last braking maneuver is relatively large, a finite-thrust, locally flat, near-optimal guidance is introduced and applied. Simplified dynamics is assumed for the purpose of defining a minimum-time optimal control problem along the last thrust arc. This admits a closed-form solution, which is iteratively used until the desired instantaneous hovering condition is reached. The numerical results in non-nominal flight conditions testify to the effectiveness of the guidance approach at hand in terms of propellant consumption and precision at landing.