Real-Time Retargeting Using Controllability Boundary for Chandrayaan-3 Lunar Landing
For lunar landing missions, this work provides a first-of-its-kind operational data-driven retargeting framework that enhances landing safety.
The paper presents a real-time retargeting guidance policy for the Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission, using a controllability boundary to enable safe retargeting to alternate landing sites. The approach was validated through pre-flight simulations and actual flight results.
This paper presents the real-time retargeting guidance policy developed for the Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission. The baseline guidance generates approximate fuel-optimal descent trajectories, while a high-level policy enables safe retargeting to alternate sites when the nominal site becomes infeasible. The retargeting strategy leverages a convex representation of the controllability boundary, allowing rapid feasibility checks and real-time target updates. To the best of the authors knowledge, this represents the first application of a data-driven retargeting framework in an operational lunar landing mission. Pre-flight simulations and Chandrayaan-3 flight results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.