Development and deployment of a performance model for the prototype planetary exploration hopper

This paper describes the development of a detailed model of the TALARIS hopper and demonstrates its performance. TALARIS (Terrestrial Artificial Lunar And Reduced gravIty Simulator) is a small prototype hopping vehicle currently being developed in collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Draper Laboratory. It will serve as an Earth-based testbed for guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) algorithms that will be used to explore lunar and other planetary surfaces remotely. As part of the overall design process, a three degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) performance model called HopperSim was created to simulate the vehicle and run various experiments. First, the design and details of the model are described. Then its capabilities are demonstrated in a study comparing the performance of the Earth-based TALARIS to its Moon-based equivalent. Through HopperSim it is shown that, in 3-DOF, TALARIS can closely emulate a lunar hopper with respect to relevant fight parameters. The model is seen to be a useful tool that can be matured to better predict important details of the performance characteristics of the TALARIS hopper and similar proposed vehicles.