Lunar ascent and orbit injection via locally-flat near-optimal guidance and nonlinear reduced-attitude control

This work deals with an explicit guidance and control architecture for autonomous lunar ascent and orbit injection, i.e., the locally-flat near-optimal guidance, accompanied by nonlinear reduced-attitude control. This is a new explicit guidance scheme, based on the local projection of the position and velocity variables, in conjunction with the real-time solution of the associated minimum-time problem. A recently-introduced quaternion-based reduced-attitude control algorithm, which enjoys quasi-global stability properties, is employed to drive the longitudinal axis of the ascent vehicle toward the desired direction. Actuation, based on thrust vectoring, is modeled as well. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations prove the effectiveness of the guidance, control, and actuation architecture proposed in this study for precise lunar orbit insertion, in the presence of nonnominal flight conditions.