Autonomous Mars Airplane Navigation (AMAN)

Many of the most scientifically interesting areas on Mars, such as Layered sedimentary rock and recent aeolian and groundwater processes, cannot be adequately studied using remotely sensed data and cannot be accessed by Landers. Autonomous airplanes promise to provide accessibility to these areas. However, current Mars airplane concepts suffer from two fundamental limitations that impact the scientific value of the missions. First, mission duration is limited by the severe mass constraints of an airplane and the impact of diurnal cycle on available power. Proposed mission durations range from tens of minutes to a few hours. Second, communication contact times for relay orbiters will be short (on the order of 20 minutes) thereby limiting data return. These constraints create an operational requirement for precision autonomous navigation (10 meter accuracy) enabling acquisition of highly focused scientific data. This research program will demonstrate the feasibility of using Landmark recognition to achieve autonomous navigation with accuracies better than 10 meters. Unique multi-resolution algorithms enable operations within the throughput limitations of existing flight processors. MGS data will be used in phase I to demonstrate the ability to recognize geodetically referenced features. During phase II an flight test will be conducted on an existing flight testbed.