Landing of the asteroid probe with three-legged cushioning: Planar asymmetric dynamics and safety margin

The probes landing on the surfaces of the asteroids can increase the scientific return of the exploration missions and also promote the development of deep space resources. Because of its excellent applicability to the uneven terrain and a lighter configuration than the four-legged mechanisms, the three-legged cushioning mechanisms are suitable for dissipating the impact energy and then quickly stabilizing the probe attitude when the probe lands on the micro-gravitational surfaces of the asteroids. Research on the landing dynamics of the probe facilitates to the design of the landing-cushioning mechanism and the optimization of its configuration, as well as the assessment of the landing safety. Comparing with the previous extensive related literature focusing on landing dynamics of the probes assisted by the four-legged cushioning mechanisms, this paper studies creatively the planar dynamics considering the asymmetric characteristic and the leg-leg coupling to understand the landing process of the asteroid probe with the three-legged cushioning mechanism and thereby to optimize the configuration of cushioning mechanism and assess safety margin of the landing. According to the touchdown status, the asymmetric landing modes are classified and the coupling issue in the construction of the landing models is explained. Consequently, two types of dynamics models describing the two-stages touchdown cushioning process of the probe are established. Then, five significant configuration factors of the cushioning mechanism are extracted, and their values combinations are designed according to the Taguchi orthogonal method. On this basis, the maximum safe landing attitude angles of the probe are solved by using these values combinations as the input conditions under the dangerous situations in different landing modes. The range analysis and nonlinear fitting methods are employed to discuss the influence of the configuration factors on the landing safety margin, and the favorable parameter values of the configuration factors are determined. Next, the influence of the ground obstacle on the landing safety margin and several methods to improve the margin are researched. Finally, the complete attitude changes of the probe in two representative landing cases are analyzed. The results studied in this paper can contribute to configuration optimization of the three-legged cushioning mechanisms and safety assessment of the legged probes landing on the asteroids, as well as to provide a reference for discussing the leg-leg coupling issue received less attention in landing dynamics of the probes with the four-legged cushioning mechanisms.