Geospatial technologies for Chang’e-3 and Chang’e-4 lunar rover missions

Abstract

This paper presents a brief overview of the geospatial technologies developed and applied in Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4 lunar rover missions. Photogrammetric mapping techniques were used to produce topographic products of the landing site with meter level resolution using orbital images before landing, and to produce centimeter-resolution topographic products in near real-time after landing. Visual positioning techniques were used to determine the locations of the two landers using descent images and orbital basemaps immediately after landing. During surface operations, visual-positioning-based rover localization was performed routinely at each waypoint using Navcam images. The topographic analysis and rover localization results directly supported waypoint-to-waypoint path planning, science target selection and scientific investigations. A GIS-based digital cartography system was also developed to support rover teleoperation.

WITHDRAWN: Dimensional Optimization of Multi-legged Climbing Robot for Asteriod Exploration Based on Performance Atlas

“…In recent years, researchers are more and more interested in the exploration of small celestial bodies with mirco-gravity such as asteroids, comets and so on [2,3]. Most scientific missions to Mars and the moon are carried out by wheeled robots with excellent mobility and wide range of mobile [4,5]. However, on the asteriod surface, wheeled robots cannot locomote because contact forces could push them into space without gravity exerted by asteriods.…”

Topographic Mapping of the Moon in the 21st Century: From Hectometer to Millimeter Scales

“…Photogrammetric techniques have been developed for topographic mapping using the new orbital, descent, and rover data (Kirk et al, 2008(Kirk et al, , 2012Oberst et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2019;Di et al, 2020). Rigorous geometric modelling of the lunar images is the basis for high precision geometric processing of the images.…”

“…At the Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4 lading sites, topographic mapping and analyses have been done at meter to millimeter scales using orbital, descent and rover-based images before launch, after landing and during surface operations Wu et al, 2014aWu et al, , 2020Di et al, 2019aDi et al, , 2020. For example, a 4.5 m-resolution DTM and a 1.5 m-resolution DOM of the Chang'e-3 landing site were generated using the 1.5 mresolution stereo images acquired by Chang'e-2 and used to support topographic analysis of the landing site.…”

“…For example, the topographic mapping products from orbital images are the bases for morphological analyses of lunar landforms, and are critical to support lunar geologic studies. Meanwhile, high-resolution orbital mapping products are particularly important to support landing site evaluation for a lander/rover mission, and also valuable to support lander localization, science target designation, path planning and rover localization (Wu et al, 2014a(Wu et al, , 2020Liu et al, 2015Di et al, 2019aDi et al, , 2020.…”

“…Along the traverse in each mission, the rover obtains Navcam stereo images at every waypoint and acquires Pancam stereo images at some waypoints. These stereo images, with better than millimeter resolutions in near-range and centimeter resolutions in middle-range, have been routinely used in detailed topographic mapping and rover localization to support mission operations Di et al, 2020).…”