Survey and Use of Lava Tunnels during Future Lunar Missions (Part 1).

The paper presents approaches to the survey and use of such unique natural formations as lunar lava tunnels. The most important applied technology pro-posed for use at the stages of design, construction and operation of lunar bases is laser scanning. The capabilities of existing lidar systems allow obtaining spa-tial data on objects and formations on the surface of other planets with high accuracy and efficiency. The issues of practical application of mobile and sta-tionary scanning laser studies of lunar lava tunnels are considered.

Laser Scanning Devices and Their Use in Future Lunar Missions.

The paper gives approaches to the use of existing LIDAR (Light Identification, Detection and Ranging) scanning systems to survey the Moon and other plan-ets. The study conducted is based on available domestic and foreign experience in using aerial (ALS), mobile (MLS), and ground (GLS) laser scanners. Issues of using space scanning systems for spatial and technical monitoring are also considered. The formulated problems of the creation and operation of space-purposed scanning systems allow determining the priority lines of applied scientific studies in this subject area.

Prospects for using near-Earth GNSS as an infrastructure for navigation support of Lunar missions

An increasing number of space agencies consider Moon exploration as a part of national and international space programs. Exploration plans include a distributed network of facilities on and around the Moon; opportunities for “driving force” projects based on the International Space Station program experience; and, on the whole, formation of the “Earth – low lunar orbit – Moon surface” payload traffic flow. The payload needs analysis shows that the cutting-edge Moon exploration program requires high quality navigation services (precise estimation of coordinates and velocity in near-real time). The subject of this paper is the issues of creating a navigation service based on the experience of the Russian segment of ISS and using the existing near-Earth GNSS systems as a navigation infrastructure.

Virtual prototyping of the lunar module landing system to improve cosmonauts’ spatial and situational awareness

Relevance. The transition to manned flights after the launches of the automatic stations of the «Luna-Globus» series will require studying issues of the crew safety in lunar missions. First of all, it will be necessary to clarify the role and capabilities of cosmonauts when landing the lunar module in complicated conditions. The subject of the study is the means of modeling and visualizing the progress of the flight operation observed by the operator. The area of study is the issues of ensuring the safety of the automatic landing of the lunar descent module with the possibility of switching to manual control mode after a decision was made by a human to change the landing site of the lunar module. The provision of spatial and situational awareness is considered in this context as a prerequisite for the timely response of the operator to the occurrence of a non-standard situation. Objective. The goal of the work is to present the virtual prototyping of the Moon landing stage for studying details of information support for cosmonauts during the conditions of visual control complication. Methodology. The analysis of ways to maintain spatial and situational awareness for a timely assessment by the operator of the suitability of the predicted site in the landing area is a key condition for deciding whether to switch from automatic mode to manual mode. At the same time, the quality of preparation and decision-making in a short time frame significantly depends on the accepted methods of visualizing the landing on the surface of the Moon. Results and Discussion. The directions of application of modeling and visualization tools for virtual prototyping of the landing of the descent lunar module are formulated. It is shown that a person's decision-making in conditions of time scarcity and possible visual interference when monitoring the external environment requires special means of information support. The issues of organizing the visual environment in accordance with the information needs of a person are studied taking into account the prototypes in the classes of manned and unmanned vertical take-off and landing vehicles, for which similar types of operator activities are described. This made it possible to formulate basic approaches to modeling the landing of vehicles in conditions of problems with visual perceptions. Taking into account the increased requirements, we consider promising approaches based on the synthesis of 2D and 3D-visual dynamic scenes, as well as precedents for the use of synthetic vision systems in the described conditions. The scope of application of the obtained results is not limited to the tasks of designing complex human-technical systems, but may have applications in the field of building computer simulators for the training of cosmonauts. This practice compares favorably with the options for human training on hardware-in-the-loop simulation models and on real helicopter-type vehicles in terms of safety and flexibility of modification. Conclusion. The use of virtual prototyping of the moon landing makes it possible to expand the search for options for improving the cosmonaut's spatial and situational awareness. The general conclusion in the context of this goal pursuing is the feasibility of using simulation methods to build a virtual environment that recreates the conditions for a cosmonaut to make a decision in an emergency situation when landing a lunar module, as one of the most critical flight operations for the safety of lunar missions. Key words Lunar exploration, lunar lander, landing simulation and visualization, virtual activity environment, unmanned and manned vertical take-off and landing vehicles, spatial and situational awareness, synthetic vision systems.

Feature Detector on the Moon Trek Portal

<p>The Moon Trek portal (https://trek.nasa.gov/moon) aims to provide the scientific community as well as the general public access to lunar data collected from various lunar missions. The portal also offers a suite of tools with the goal of allowing users to analyze the data for the purposes of education, mission planning, and research. Such tools include elevation profilers, crater and rock detection, lighting analysis, and slope analysis to name a few. Moon Trek is further expanding its analytic capabilities by adding feature detection to its toolset.</p> <p>The feature detector, similar to the rock and crater detection tools, seeks to detect features on the lunar surface using orbital imagery. Unlike the detection tools currently available on the Moon Trek, the feature detector is built to be generic, trainable, and able to seek out any feature when provided a training set for the feature in question. The tool currently supports detection of craters, rocks, and lunar pits.</p> <p>The feature detector takes a deep learning approach in finding features from orbital imagery. The model used in the latest detection tool is a Faster Region Based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster-RCNN) with a finetuning approach. More succinctly, the finetuning approach uses a model which has been developed and trained on a different and larger training set. The classification layer is replaced to detect features of the chosen domain (rocks, pits, craters, etc.) The model is then trained with smaller training sets.</p> <p>Currently we use panchromatic Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) as input. However, the model can be trained on orbital imagery from any mission. The tool’s output includes the NAC image with bounding boxes over detected and an ascii file showing pixel coordinates of each detected feature.</p>

Design and Testing of the TeamIndus ECA Lunar Rover Navigation and Control

TeamIndus’ Lunar Logistics vision includes multiple lunar missions over the coming years to meet requirements of science, commercial and efforts towards building readiness for crewed missions to Mars in the global exploration roadmap. TeamIndus is the only Indian team that participated in the Google Lunar X Prize. The challenge called for privately funded spaceflight teams to be the first to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon, travel 500 meters, and transmit back high-definition video and images. The first mission is expected to have a net landed payload capacity of 50 kg. The prime objective is to demonstrate autonomous lunar landing, and operations for a Surface Exploration Rover - to collect data in the vicinity of the landing site. The rover is designed to execute the commands given by the operations manager autonomously. The rover software architecture relevant to the navigation and control is described in detail. The functional modes are defined to functionally distinguish the rover drive. Among the various operations performed by the rover are execution of simple drive steps through navigation and control algorithms. The kinematic model of the rover is studied in the hardware locomotion tests performed. The Kalman filter formulation to estimate the sensor bias and to get attitude estimate is discussed. The structural model and the frame definitions are described in a relevant section. A simple heading control algorithm is designed to control the heading direction of the rover according to the operations requirement. The path planning process and visual odometry processes are described. Finally the SIMULINK$^{\textregistered}$ model is tested on the prototype rover and the test experience results are discussed in the last section.