Autonomous optical guidance and navigation around asteroids

An impending demand for exploring the small bodies such as the comets and the asteroids envisioned the Japanese MUSES-C mission to the near Earth asteroid Nereus. An autonomous optical guidance and navigation strategy around the asteroid is discussed in this paper. Four major new schemes are dealt with here: They are (1) Aligned intercept guidance, (2) Strategic building of the flight phases, (3) Image processing of line-of-sight shift information instead of characteristic point tracking, and (4) Stability and accuracy analysis associated with the guidance and navigation strategies developed here. Some comprehensive numerical illustrations are also given to support them.