Hopping Trajectory Planning for Asteroid Surface Exploration Accounting for Terrain Roughness

Abstract

Hopping rovers have become a promising way of asteroid surface exploration. This paper focuses on the hopping trajectory design between two given surface points and discusses the irregular terrain's influence on the design process. By taking the hopping rover as a point mass, dynamical equations are derived based on the polyhedral method. The principle of hopping trajectory planning is summarized with the related solving algorithm. The initial velocity increments required to control the subsequent hopping trajectories are determined based on parabolic motion. The numerical simulations apply a triaxial ellipsoid to approximate comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro preliminarily. The smooth and rocky polyhedron models of the ellipsoid are constructed, respectively. With the two models, the different initial conditions' hopping trajectories are planned and compared to verify the proposed planning method and discuss the influence of terrain roughness on the trajectory design.