Safe Position and Attitude Control for Landing on Small Celestial Bodies with Gravitational Uncertainty
Abstract
Landing on small celestial bodies is challenging because the spacecraft must satisfy safety and actuator constraints despite gravitational forces that are difficult to model accurately. This article presents an optimal control for safe landing with gravitational uncertainty and strict actuator limits. The approach addresses spacecraft pose control with attitude represented on SO(3), where there are actuator constraints and state constraints on position, attitude, velocity, and angular velocity. The approach combines several key techniques. First, the gravitational force uncertainty is estimated using an extended high-gain observer, and we present a new dynamic upper bound on the estimation error. This gravitational estimate and dynamic bound are then used to compute optimal control forces and torques that satisfy state and actuator constraints while tracking a landing trajectory. Optimal forces and torques are obtained from the closed-form solution to a quadratic program that has a single control barrier function constraint constructed by composing multiple control barrier functions that are designed to enforce each state and actuator constraint. Finally, an optimal allocation maps control forces and torques to actuator commands that satisfy actuator constraints. The method is demonstrated in simulation using 2 vehicle configurations with severe gravitational uncertainty.
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BibTeX
@misc{arenasuribe2026safe,
title = {{Safe Position and Attitude Control for Landing on Small Celestial Bodies with Gravitational Uncertainty}},
author = {Felipe Arenas-Uribe and T. Michael Seigler and Jesse B. Hoagg},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.04816},
eprint = {2610.04816},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04816},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Safe Position and Attitude Control for Landing on Small Celestial Bodies with Gravitational Uncertainty
AU - Felipe Arenas-Uribe
AU - T. Michael Seigler
AU - Jesse B. Hoagg
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/03
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.04816
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.04816
AB - Landing on small celestial bodies is challenging because the spacecraft must satisfy safety and actuator constraints despite gravitational forces that are difficult to model accurately. This article presents an optimal control for safe landing with gravitational uncertainty and strict actuator limits. The approach addresses spacecraft pose control with attitude represented on SO(3), where there are actuator constraints and state constraints on position, attitude, velocity, and angular velocity. The approach combines several key techniques. First, the gravitational force uncertainty is estimated using an extended high-gain observer, and we present a new dynamic upper bound on the estimation error. This gravitational estimate and dynamic bound are then used to compute optimal control forces and torques that satisfy state and actuator constraints while tracking a landing trajectory. Optimal forces and torques are obtained from the closed-form solution to a quadratic program that has a single control barrier function constraint constructed by composing multiple control barrier functions that are designed to enforce each state and actuator constraint. Finally, an optimal allocation maps control forces and torques to actuator commands that satisfy actuator constraints. The method is demonstrated in simulation using 2 vehicle configurations with severe gravitational uncertainty.
ER -