Miguel San Martin

California Institute of Technology | CIT · Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Europa is a premier target for advancing both planetary science and astrobiology, as well as for opening a new window into the burgeoning field of comparative oceanography. The potentially habitable subsurface ocean of Europa may harbor life, and the globally young and comparatively thin ice shell of Europa may contain biosignatures that are readil...

As part of the upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission, NASA is planning to include an autonomous helicopter to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of using helicopters for Mars exploration. Helicopter flight on Mars is challenging due to the extremely thin atmosphere, which is only partially offset by a reduction in gravity. This paper focuses on fli...

Demonstration of the BiBlade sampler on-board a full-scale spacecraft emulator for touch-and-go sampling validation. The spacecraft emulator is 2200kg - representative of full spacecraft mass and inertia. Closed loop control of the spacecraft emulator provides testing at representative touchdown velocities. The material sampled into is MPACS comet...

Highspeed video replayed approximately 1/170th speed showing sample acquisition of high-end expected strength comet simulant and validating robustness of impact into a high strength/rigidity surface via survivability of the sampler mechanism impacting a concrete cinder block. The overload/isolation springs can be seen compressing when the blades st...

Demonstration of the end-to-end BiBlade sampling chain including sample acquisition and sample stowage. The sampler is mounted to a 3 DoF planar robotic arm representative of the notional flight system. The BiBlade releases sample vault lids located on the face of the tool (inside the blades) via a Frangibolt bolt cutter. These lids passively affix...

The BiBlade sampling chain was developed for use in a potential Comet Surface Sample Return mission. Following prior versions of the sampling tool, a new tool was developed and validated to TRL 6. Sample acquisition testing was performed across a range of comet simulants and operational conditions. Tool operation was validated in a thermal-vacuum c...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration have recently been investigating a mission concept known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, aimed at collecting a large amount of asteroid material and transporting it into lunar orbit for inspection by human astronauts. Of the two mission options that have been considered, one involves the capture o...

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project successfully landed the rover Curiosity in Gale crater in August 5, 2012, thus demonstrating and validating a series of technical innovations and advances which resulted in a quantum leap in Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) performance relative to previous missions. These included the first use at Mars of...

Three sampling tools were developed as candidate tools for use in a potential Comet Surface Sample Return mission for a touch-and-go mission architecture. In a touch-and-go mission architecture, a spacecraft would maneuver to several meters from the surface of a small body and deploy a sampling tool to the surface using a manipulator. A sample woul...

The powered flight segment of Mars Science Laboratory's Entry, Descent, and Landing system extends from backshell separation through landing. This segment is responsible for removing the final 0.1% of the kinetic energy dissipated during entry, descent, and landing and culminates with the successful touchdown of the rover on the surface of Mars. Po...

This paper describes the flyaway guidance, navigation, and control system design that was successfully used during the landing of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on Mars on 5 August 2012. One of the most challenging phases of the Mars Science Laboratory mission is the entry, descent, and landing that starts with the Mars atmospheric entry and ends w...

Well before Curiosity's successful landing at Gale Crater on the night of 5 August 2012, the entry, descent, and landing team had to contend with a number of development challenges that threatened the system architecture, the spacecraft's performance, and its safety. Given the ambitiousness of the landing system, perhaps it comes as no surprise tha...

On August 5, 2012, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission successfully delivered the Curiosity rover to its intended target in Gale Crater. It was the most complex and ambitious landing in the history of the red planet. A key component of the landing system, the requirements for which were driven by the mission ambitious science goals, was the G...

This paper describes the attitude controller for the atmospheric entry of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The controller will command 8 RCS thrusters to control the 3-axis attitude of the entry capsule. The Entry Controller is formulated as three independent channels in the control frame, which is nominally aligned with the stability frame. Each...

In 2010, the Mars science laboratory (MSL) mission will pioneer the next generation of robotic entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems by delivering the largest and most capable rover to date to the surface of Mars. In addition to landing more mass than prior missions to Mars, MSL will offer access to regions of Mars that have been previously unr...

In 2010, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will pioneer the next generation of robotic entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems, by delivering the largest and most capable rover to date to the surface of Mars. To do so, MSL will fly a guided lifting entry at a lift-to-drag ratio in excess of that ever flown at Mars, deploy the largest para...

This paper describes the preliminary concept for the RCS 3-axis attitude controller for the exo-atmospheric and guided entry phases of the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descend and Landing. The entry controller is formulated as three independent channels in the control frame, which is nominally aligned with the stability frame. Each channel has a...

In 2010, plans call for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission to pioneer the next generation of robotic entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems by delivering the largest and most capable rover to date to the surface of Mars. Improved altitude performance, coupled with latitude limits as large as 45 degrees off the equator and a precise delive...

In 2010, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission will pioneer the next generation of robotic entry, descent, and landing (EDL) systems by delivering the largest and most capable rover to date to the surface of Mars. In addition to landing more mass than prior missions to Mars, MSL will offer access to regions of Mars that have been previously unr...

NASA/JPL's Mars exploration rovers acquire their attitude upon command and autonomously propagate their attitude and position. The rovers use accelerometers and images of the sun to acquire attitude, autonomously searching the sky for the sun with an articulated camera. To propagate the attitude and position the rovers use either accelerometer and...

Descent image motion estimation system is the first machine-vision system for estimating lander velocity during planetary descent. Composed of sensors and software, DIMES features a descent imager, a radar altimeter, an inertial-measurement unit, and an algorithm for combining sensor measurements to estimate horizontal velocity - the speed across t...

This paper describes an algorithm for translational motion estimation near a comet a surface using scanning laser rangefinder data. Our technique is based on terrain map generation from rangefinder data followed by terrain map alignment. The output of our algorithm is estimates of rigid translational motion and motion covariance between scans. Our...

For most imaging sensors, a constant (dc) pointing error is unimportant (unless large), but time-dependent (ac) errors degrade performance by either distorting or smearing the image. When properly quantified, the separation of the root-mean-square effects of random line-of-sight motions into dc and ac components can be used to obtain the minimum ne...

A star tracker capable of continuously reading out its current three-axis inertial orientation based on the star patterns in its field of view would greatly enhance and simplify the autonomy and fault tolerance of spacecraft attitude determination. The pattern recognition problem of matching a limited field of view containing a small number of star...

An essential aspect of the design of control systems for large, flexible spacecraft is fault tolerance. Because it is anticipated that a large number of sensors and actuators will be required to realize good control over these assemblies, the detection and isolation of component failures cannot be based on direct comparisons among replicated compon...

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1985. Supervised by Wallace E. Vander Velde. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 133).