The NASA Autonomous Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) program is developing an autonomous precision landing system capable of landing a spacecraft on the moon. To achieve the desired 90 m (3o) landing accuracy some version of a Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) is necessary. One such algorithm is described in a companion paper. These algorithms require an accurate representation of the lunar terrain for both the on-board TRN algorithms and the ground-based software test bed (truth model) to verify the performance of the algorithms. In its terminal landing phase, the spacecraft will touchdown in a safe location using two algorithms: Hazard Detection and Avoidance (HDA) and the Hazard-Reference Navigation (HRN). To verify the performance of the HDA and HRN algorithms, ALHAT needs lunar surface models incorporating rock shape and size distribution statistics.
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