Principled Stochastic Trajectory Planning for Asteroid Reconnaissance

This paper presents the development and evaluation of the Hierarchical Asteroid Reconnaissance Planner (HARP) algorithm, an optimization-based autonomous trajectory planning algorithm for the asteroid reconnaissance phase of a deep-space exploration mission. The reconnaissance phase is a low-altitude flyby to collect detailed information about a potential landing site. Although such autonomous deep-space exploration missions have garnered considerable interest recently, state-of-the-practice in trajectory design involves a time-intensive ground-based open-loop process that forward propagates multiple trajectories with a range of initial conditions and parameters to account for uncertainties in spacecraft knowledge and actuation. In this work, we introduce a stochastic trajectory optimization-based approach to generate trajectories that satisfy both the mission and spacecraft safety constraints during the reconnaissance phase of the Deep-Space Autonomous Robotic Explorer (DARE) mission concept, which seeks to travel to and explore a near-Earth object autonomously, with minimal ground intervention. We first use the Multi-Spacecraft Concept and Autonomy Tool (MuSCAT) simulation framework to rigorously validate the underlying modeling assumptions for HARP and then propose a method to transform this stochastic optimal control problem into a deterministic one tailored for use with an off-the-shelf nonlinear solver. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of HARP through extensive numerical experiments and show that it outperforms the state-of-the-practice approaches for mission trajectory planning, as exemplified by OSIRIS-REx.