Design and Validation of a Low-Cost Navigation System for Precise Landing Points of Rocket's Core Stage
- Paper ID
96926
- DOI
- author
- company
CAS Space
- country
China
- year
2025
- abstract
This study develops a cost-optimized integrated navigation system for reusable rocket core stage recovery, combining inertial measurement units (IMUs) and GNSS to balance precision, reliability, and affordability. A comprehensive design and simulation framework is established, covering the entire workflow of the navigation system for core stage recovery. A compensation algorithm is designed to mitigate the impact of airframe oscillations under light wind conditions during initial alignment, ensuring rapid and cost-effective launch readiness. The inertial navigation computation in the launch inertial frame and Kalman filter design are elaborated, with redundant navigation computation strategies implemented for fault scenarios to safeguard precision. Furthermore, the hardware and software architecture of the navigation-flight control computer is detailed, addressing the environmental challenges of core stage flight and hardware integration requirements. The system’s performance is rigorously validated through hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations, high/low-temperature environmental tests, and dynamic vehicle motion trials. Results demonstrate that the proposed integrated navigation system meets the stringent reliability and accuracy demands of reusable rocket missions, achieving positioning errors of less than 0.15° in attitude and 10 meters in position under extreme conditions. {\bf Keywords: }Reusable launch vehicle; integrated navigation system; low-cost design; Kalman filtering; hardware-in-the-loop simulation; fault-tolerant navigation.