Xing Yan

Guidance, navigation and control technologies of Chang’E-3 lunar rover

The jade rabbit lunar rover of ChangE-3 probe was the first explorer of China roaming on the surface of extratellurian celestials, which had the totally different guidance, navigation and control (GNC) technologies from the earth orbital spacecrafts. Several key technologies had been broken in GNC system of ChangE-3 lunar rover, such as autonomous position and attitude determination, multi-wheel motion control on lunar surface, binocular stereo visio based autonomous environment perception, traversibility quantitative analysis based path planning, structure-light vision based obstacle avoidance for emergence case, and experimentation on earth. Since December 14, 2013 the ChangE-3 probe landed successfully on the moon, the GNC system of jade rabbit lunar rover had been working well all the time, and accomplished the set mission. The GNC technologies employed in ChangE-3 Lunar Rover laid foundation for future space exploration. The mission requirement, system component, key technologies, work modes and so forth of GNC system were discussed systematically in this paper.