NASA sent an Alta-X drone aloft on Aug. 27 at Rogers Dry Lake near the Armstrong center in Edwards, California, flying a simulated lunar descent and landing with the SPLICE payload aboard.
The Aug. 27 flight had SPLICE employing an advanced guidance system, software that directs the vehicle’s path, to chart the ground and judge possible landing zones, steering the drone away when the chosen spot looked hazardous. The system builds high-resolution digital elevation maps from light-detection and sensor data, meaning measurements from light-based instruments that gauge shape and distance. Those elevation maps feed the terrain assessment and divert logic that guided the simulated descent.
The space agency demonstrated technology meant to help spacecraft pilot themselves to safe sites on the Moon and other worlds, with autonomous meaning to find a path without a human pilot. The Aug. 27 flight at Rogers Dry Lake was a simulated lunar descent intended to prove this self-guided navigation ability before any actual planetary mission.
Researchers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston built the SPLICE payload and worked with Armstrong specialists to integrate, test, and fly it on the Alta-X drone during June and July. Those June and July checks confirmed communications, data handling, telemetry, and command-and-control, the links used to send orders and receive status, between the SPLICE payload and the drone.
NASA project manager Davis Adams said the Aug. 27 flight marked the culmination of almost a decade of effort for the SPLICE project. “This flight test is the culmination of almost a decade of work for the SPLICE project,” Adams said. Adams said the Aug. 27 flight lifted SPLICE’s technology readiness level, a measure of how mature the technology is, clearing the way for use on future robotic and crewed lunar flights.
The agency will run a full-scale SPLICE test at Voyager Technologies in Mojave, California, later this month. The agency said it conducted the June and July drone checks to prepare for the upcoming full-scale test at the Mojave firm. Adams said NASA is working with industry on how to use the guidance system when it reaches the NASA software catalog, an agency software list, planned for this fall. The agency intends to put the guidance software in the catalog this fall and is talking with industry about how companies could use it.
The agency has worked with commercial lunar lander companies to put versions of SPLICE into their vehicles. Industry partners are discussing how to carry versions of SPLICE on commercial lunar spacecraft.
Adams said some firms are studying SPLICE navigation for precision landing uses and possible additions for autonomous surface mobility. Adams said businesses are looking at the system for precision touchdowns and potential self-directed travel across a planet or moon after landing. Autonomous surface mobility means the ability to move across a planet or moon without direct human control, traveling after touchdown instead of staying in one place.
Adams said the guidance and navigation checks cover Earth, Moon, and Mars landings. Landers planned for Moon Base missions use NASA data from systems such as SPLICE to make soft landings on the Moon.
Around Prague says landing ranks among the riskiest parts of any mission to another world and that a lander cannot always rely on humans to choose a site immediately. Around Prague calls the drone flight one step in a longer effort and says the technology has not yet flown on a real lunar landing. Around Prague says safer, more precise touchdowns could raise the chances that future robotic and crewed missions reach the surface in one piece.
The Flight Opportunities project, housed at NASA Armstrong, supported earlier SPLICE flights that built a base for raising the payload’s technology readiness level. Flight Opportunities-supported testing in 2019 used a descent altitude and landing path like those expected on a lunar mission. Flight Opportunities-supported testing in 2020 demonstrated two NASA-built precision landing sensor systems, instruments that help a craft touch down at a chosen spot.
Join the discussion