TRANSACTIONS OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY FOR AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE SCIENCES, AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY JAPAN
Online ISSN : 1884-0485
ISSN-L : 1884-0485
d) Astrodynamics, Navigation Guidance and Control
Base-Extension Separation Mechanism for Planetary Exploration Spacecraft Landing
Naoaki SAEKISusumu HARAMasatsugu OTSUKITsubasa WATANABEYoji YAMADA
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2014 Volume 12 Issue ists29 Pages Pd_91-Pd_100

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Abstract

In future surveys, planetary exploration spacecraft will need to land on rock beds and slopes. Therefore, spacecraft should be equipped with landing methods to facilitate soft landings in these severe regions. However, conventional landing methods have problems such as high rebound, the impossibility of reuse, and excessive resource consumption. To overcome these problems, the authors previously invented several landing methods, but these have practical limitations. Thus, this paper proposes a novel landing mechanism called the base-extension separation mechanism (BESM), which focuses on energy conversion using springs and separable units, and discusses a single-axis falling-type small-scale model of a spacecraft with the BESM. Then, the rebound and acceleration suppression performance is evaluated through simulations. These reveal that the BESM realizes good performance under nominal conditions. The BESM is shown to have good robustness against variations in the ground stiffness, ground damping, spacecraft mass, and installed mass. The study findings reveal that the BESM is a promising method: it overcomes the drawbacks of the conventional methods and our previous inventions. In addition, the BESM generally performs better in soft landings than our previous inventions.

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© 2014 The Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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