Vehicle Navigation by Visual Navigational Aids for Automatic Lunar Mission

Nowadays the question of Moon exploration is one of the key priorities. Many Lunar robotics missions are planned in near future by different space agencies around the world. Moon has considered to be the best place for a research station with long-term human presence for finding answers on fundamental questions about the universe. Automatic navigation of starship during a landing phase on Lunar surface is already solved with a help of inertial reference system aided visual algorithms. However, questions of automatic navigation of moving and flying vehicles on the Lunar surface are still open. Inertial navigation is limited by time, self-localization and mapping algorithms require multiple unique features of relief to guarantee required accuracy for successful automatic mission complication. In the current study, we propose the deployment of a network of visual navigational aids on the Lunar surface to support ground automatic missions. A weak atmosphere of the Moon makes effective visual beacons navigation system for long areas. A network of navigational aids includes primary and secondary ground stations which are blinking synchronously. Synchronization is supported by radio waves from the primary ground station. We consider the nature of crater relief to increase operational area of the system. The Time Difference of Arrival method is used to detect vehicle position by blinking network of visual navigational aids. In the numerical application, we consider different scenarios of network configuration to support automatic vehicle navigation inside of Tycho crater. Also, deployment of visual navigational aids network will increase the number of optical features which improve performance of already used positioning methods.