When a spacecraft lands on the moon or a planet, there is a risk of overturning if the ground is tilted, there is an obstacle, or the spacecraft has a horizontal residue speed. In the early exploration, we have landed on safe places, but in the future, we need to land on steep terrains, such as scientifically interested places. Until now, we have been conducting research that has introduced semi-active control on landing legs to avoid overturning. In order to improve the performance, we will conduct the study of interference with the liquid fuel movement mounted on the spacecraft, the optimization of the landing leg pad, and the use of vented-type airbags.

In order to guide a spacecraft accurately and safely to the designated place, it is useful to use onboard camera images. We are conducting researches on position estimation by matching the camera images and map information, obstacle detection from images, and environment recognition using images.

When we decide a site for exploration, it is necessary to optimize various objectives such as sunshine conditions, communication visibility with the earth, slope of the ground, and scientific importance. Since the weight of each parameter changes depending on the situation, in some cases calculation in near-real time is required, making it difficult to perform a full search. To solve the problem, we are conducting the research to obtain multi-objective optimal solutions in advance, or to search sub-optimal solutions at high speed using genetic algorithms, etc.