A Legged Small Celestial Body Landing Mechanism: Landing Simulation and Experimental Test

Abstract

Landing mechanism tends to rebound and turn over, and the stability time is long when landing on the small celestial body. Its landing performance in different conditions is necessary to be evaluated to guide the landing. Here, landing performance evaluation is realized by simulation. Key factors affecting the landing performance including cardan element damping, foot anchors, retro-rocket thrust, landing slope angle, and landing attitude are analyzed. A microgravity platform is built to test the landing mechanism, and the consistency between the simulation and the experiment is compared. On the basis of simulation and experiment, some landing suggestions are proposed to improve the landing performance.