An autonomous optical guidance and navigation around asteroids?

An impending demand for exploring the small bodies such as the comets and t he asteroids envisioned the Japanese MUSES-C mission to the near Earth aste roid Nereus, An autonomous optical guidance and navigation strategy around the asteroid is discussed in this paper. Four major new schemes are dealt w ith hers: They are (1) Aligned intercept guidance, (2) Strategic building o f the flight phases, (3) Image processing of line-of-sight shift informatio n instead of characteristic point tracking, and (4) Stability and accuracy analysis associated with the guidance and navigation strategies developed h ere. Some comprehensive numerical illustrations are also given to support t hem. 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.