Aerocapture Guidance and Control at Venus

This thesis explores the feasibility of aerocapture manoeuvres at Venus, focusing on the challenges for an autonomous Guidance and Control (G&C) system, including a partial Navigation system simulation. Aerocapture leverages atmospheric drag for orbit insertion and presents a cost-effective alternative to traditional propulsive methods. The...

Descent, Touchdown and Repositioning of a hopping planetary lander on Enceladus

This report deals with the design of a complete guidance, navigation and control system for a planetary lander on Enceladus, for both descent and repositioning. A basic lander model with a main engine, attitude thrusters and a landing gear is presented, for which the equations of motion in different reference frames are derived, including the...