LITPHAM: Low Illumination Planetary Hazard Avoidance and Mapping

NASA and the National Research Council (NRC) have maintained precision landing and hazard detection/avoidance (PL&HA) as a critical space technology required for robotic science and human exploration operations to locations with unknown or hazardous terrain. Current sensing and navigation systems are not mature enough to consistently enable reliable operations in hazardous environments, and SWaP-C gaps in state-of-art PL&HA preclude advancement of the technology by new commercial lander companies. LITPHAM will bridge the SWaP-C gap and will be a standalone 3D terrain mapping sensor capable of operating in any illumination condition. Furthermore, LITPHAM can be generalized to any mission, vehicle configuration, and concept of operations.