Computational Guidance Method for Mars Entry

In this chapter, the pseudospectral discretization and modified objective function with penalty terms are used to develop a new P-QCQP entry tracking guidance algorithm to fundamentally reduce the scale of the problem, improve the computational efficiency, and smoothen the control profile based on the original U-QCQP algorithm. Compared with the existing LQR and ETPC algorithms, the QCQP-based method is less sensitive to the initial state error, atmospheric density perturbation, and aerodynamic coefficient bias because it takes path constraints into account. The results demonstrate the potential of the improved P-QCQP algorithm for real-time onboard applications.