NASA test shows promise for autonomous planetary landings

NASA successfully demonstrated technology designed to help spacecraft autonomously navigate to safe landing sites on the Moon and on other planets, the agency said.

An Alta-X drone equipped with NASA's SPLICE guidance, navigation, and control payload completed simulated lunar descent and landing maneuvers Aug. 27. The flight took place at Rogers Dry Lake near NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

During the tests, the SPLICE payload used an advanced guidance system to map terrain and assess potential landing areas. If the system determined the targeted landing area was unsafe, it diverted the drone to a safer location. It generated high-resolution digital elevation maps from light-detection and sensor data.

Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston developed the SPLICE payload and partnered with specialists at NASA Armstrong to integrate, test, and fly it aboard the Alta-X drone in June and July. Those tests verified communications, data handling, telemetry, and command-control performance between the payload and drone. They prepared for a full-scale test at Voyager Technologies in Mojave, California, later this month.

Davis Adams, NASA project manager, said the flight test was the culmination of almost a decade of work on the SPLICE project. He said it raised the technology readiness level and prepared the system for integration into future robotic and crewed lunar flights. He said the guidance and navigation system validation applied to terrestrial, lunar, and Martian descent and landing missions.

NASA had worked with commercial lunar lander providers to implement iterations of SPLICE into their platforms. NASA said landers slated for upcoming Moon Base missions used data collected through systems like SPLICE to execute soft touchdowns on the lunar surface. Adams said NASA was coordinating with industry on using the guidance system once it became available in the NASA software catalog, which was planned for this fall.

NASA's Flight Opportunities project, based at NASA Armstrong, had enabled flight testing of the SPLICE project during its early development. Flight testing included a descent altitude and a landing trajectory in 2019 similar to what was expected on a lunar mission. It also included the demonstration of two NASA-developed precision landing sensor systems in 2020.