When a spacecraft lands on the moon or planets, there is a risk of turnover if the surface is tilted, there are obstacles, or the spacecraft has a horizontal residual velocity. In the early exploration, we chose a safe place to land, but in the future, we will be required to land on rugged terrain such as places of scientific interest. So far, we have been conducting research to improve turnover resistance by introducing semi-active control to the landing gear. In order to improve the performance further, it is necessary to study the interference with the movement of the liquid fuel mounted on the spacecraft and the optimization of the landing pad shape.

In order to guide the spacecraft to the target location accurately and safely, it is useful to use images of onboard cameras. We are conducting research on position estimation by matching camera images and map information, obstacle detection from images, and environment recognition from images.

When deciding the landing point for the moon and planets, it is necessary to optimize from various viewpoints such as sunshine conditions, visibility of communication with the earth, inclination of the ground, and scientific importance. Since the weighting of each parameter changes depending on the situation, it is necessary to calculate in near real time in some cases, and it is difficult to perform a full search. Therefore, we are conducting research such as finding a multi-purpose optimal solution in advance, and/or searching for a quasi-optimal solution at high speed using a genetic algorithm, etc.