Design considerations for a Guidance, Navigation, and Control sensor system for a robotic lunar lander

With the goal of developing a preliminary hardware and software design of a Guidance, Navigation and Control Subsystem of a robotic lunar lander for various potential missions including the International Lunar Network (ILN), navigation sensor technologies are researched and their maturity is assessed. The results of the broad technology assessment are compared with requirements generated from known or estimated design constraints, modeling and simulation results, and subject-matter expert consultations to validate the assembly design. The results identify the current baseline and some alternative components for the lander. The nominal sensor configuration baselines assume that precision landing is desired for the mission even though some of the mission concepts, including the ILN mission, could be achieved without precision landing. In these cases, the specific sensors used for precision terrain relative position measurements are removed from the configuration.