Bifurcation-Based Guidance Law for Powered Descent Landing

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel guidance law for rocket-powered descent that uses bifurcation theory to ensure stable landing targeting, demonstrated through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It presents a new guidance law based on bifurcation analysis, linking velocity dynamics to stable landing points for improved control.

Findings

The guidance law effectively directs vehicles to landing points.

Numerical simulations confirm the stability and accuracy of the approach.

The method offers a new perspective on guidance law design using dynamical systems theory.

Abstract

This paper develops a new guidance law for powered descent landing of a rocket-powered vehicle. The proposed law derives the acceleration command for a point mass model of the vehicle by expressing velocity as a dynamical system undergoing supercritical transcritical bifurcation with three bifurcation parameters. The parameters are designed such that the stable equilibrium points of the velocity dynamics correspond to the guided targeting state, that is, the landing point. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the working of the proposed guidance law.